With this year’s 47-day deep sea fishing holiday coming to an end this month, fishermen representatives in Mangaluru will hold a meeting on Wednesday to decide whether to sail out on August 1 or to delay it in view of the COVID-19 situation.
Mangaluru Trawl Boat Owners Association president Nitin Kumar told The Hindu that representatives of purse seine boat owners and other stakeholders will decide the future course of action at the meeting.
Mr. Kumar, a former chairman of Karnataka Fisheries Development Corporation (KFDC), said that Mangaluru had 1,200 fishing boats. Of all workers involved with them, nearly 4,000 are from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand. The issue of quarantine will arise when they return to work. Resuming deep sea fishing operations also involves maintaining social distancing at the fisheries harbour.
Though the State government is unlikely to extend the fishing holiday, fishermen will have to take care to ensure that COVID-19 did not spread. The meeting will discuss whether it is advisable to postpone the operations for some more days, he said, hinting that resuming deep sea fishing might be delayed.
Mr. Kumar said that of the 1,200 boats, a majority of them, 900, are trawl boats employing eight to 10 fishermen each. These boats are engaged in deep sea fishing for about 10-11 days.
Mangaluru has nearly 100 purse seine boats each one of which has 25-30 fishermen. They sail out daily and return the same day. About 200 other mechanised boats each one of which has four-five fishermen spend about three days in shallow sea waters for fishing, he said.
He said that once the catch landed on port, there are issues related to transportation to be addressed in view of COVID-19 restrictions.
This year, the State government reduced the ban on deep sea fishing from the earlier 61 days to 47, from June 15, due to the hardship faced by fishermen in view of the lockdown and the COVID-19 situation.
Usually, fishing holiday is scheduled from June 1 to July 31. The main objective of banning deep sea fishing during June and July is to protect fish wealth as commercially important species breed during this period. It is to prevent fishing of juveniles and also excessive fishing.
Mechanised boats fitted with inboard or outboard engines of 10 hp and above are banned from carrying out fishing activities during the holiday. However, fishing boats fitted with engines of up to 10 hp are allowed to carry out fishing during the period.
