As the 61-day closed season comes into effect from Thursday, fishermen anchored their mechanised and motorised boats in the 69 landing centres across the ten coastal mandals in Prakasam district.
Fishing operations using mechanised and motorised boats in the Bay of Bengal off the 106 km Prakasam coast have been banned till June 14 to conserve fish and other marine resources during the breeding season.
The ban is enforced annually so that fishermen could have a good catch during the monsoon season, Fisheries Joint Director A.Chandrasekhar Reddy told The Hindu on Sunday, while overseeing the process of anchoring of fishing boats at Kothapatnam seashore.
Officials are gearing up for a massive enumeration exercise, taken up to identify families for providing financial compensation, on April 19 in the coastal mandals of Ongole, Kothapatnam, Chirala, Vetapalem, Chinnaganjam, Nagulapapadu, Tangutur, Singarayakonda, Ulavapadu, and Gudluru.
Meanwhile, the assessment by a private weather services firm of the monsoon 2021 to be ‘normal’ on Tuesday brought cheers to fishermen.
“We can expect a good catch when the closed season ends, thanks to the prediction of a healthy monsoon,” a fisherman Prabhu Prakash Naidu at Kothapatnam Pallepalem said in a conversation with The Hindu .
Owners of motorised and mechanised boats as also fishermen operating traditional crafts should appear in person on coming Monday for enumeration. As many as 12,229 fishermen were provided ₹10,000 last year. Even those that use country-crafts were provided financial aid though they could go for fishing during the ban period, the officer said.
Meanwhile, fishermen urged the State government to enhance the financial assistance in keeping with inflation and also increase the subsidy on diesel, which had gone out of reach in the wake of steep increase in fuel price of late.
