The fishermen's community is up in arms against the Maharashtra state government and has even warned them that no action is being taken against 2,000 boats involved in illegal fishing in the coast, which use banned purse seine nets, leaving hardly any catch for others. The fishermen will soon be forced to take law and order in their hands and will begin an agitation by catching such illegal operators in the sea.
Damodar Tandel, president of Akhil Maharashtra Machhimar Kriti Samiti, said that these purse seines nets have small mesh sizes and are huge in size and can be spread over a three-kilometre radius to catch fishes in large quantities. This hardly leaves any fish for local fishermen, who use traditional methods of catch fish. There is also a severe scarcity of fishes due to overfishing by bigger bussinesmen. "The situation has reached such a point that now the local fishermen's catch is reduced to just 20 per cent and the community seems to be sailing in the same boat as the drought-hit farmers," said Tandel.
"These nets have been banned everywhere due to their small mesh size, catching even small fish. This creates a major ecological imbalance as even fishes that are breeding are caught. This has been going on for over 15 years now, and the catch has been severely hit. In fact, earlier the Maharashtra coast boasted of 128 species of fishes and now out of which only 75 to 80 species are left," Tandel said, adding that in the last 10 years itself the pomfret catch, which is the most popularly consumed fish from 8,000 tonnes has now reduced to 500 tonnes.
The fishermen have been blaming rampant corruption due to which around Mumbai, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg coast there are 900, 500 and 600 trawlers respectively being operated illegally using the purse seine nets.
"Today, the 10 lakh fishermen's community of Maharashtra whose life depends on fishing is facing the same problems that the farmers of Maharashtra are facing and committing sucides, but we want to tell the Chief Minister that we will not commit suicides instead we will soon start a agitation in the sea and as soon as our people find any boats that are operating illegally we will stop them and if there is a law and order situation the responsibility will be that of the Government authourities," added Tandel stating that the meetings have been conducted at various locations and the agitation in konkan has already begun and will follow in other places too now.
Sanjay Koli who represents the fishing community of Vasai said that there was no other option left other than agitation as despite the fact that in 2012 Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Animal Husbandary, Dairying and Fisheries wrote to the Secretary Dairy development and Fisheries Maharashtra stating that the State Government was advised not to allow any type of unethical, illegal and harmful fishing practices including purse seining irrespective of jurisdiction yet no action was being taken.
In fact fishermen also warned that apart from affecting their trade these illegal operators also pose a security risk to Maharashtra as who knows who is operating the illegal boats and these can also be used by terrorists too.
Maharashtra has 23,000 fishing boats out of which 13,000 boats are mechanized and the annual catch of around 3.5 lakh metric tonnes is worth Rupees 4000 crores of which Rupees 2000 crores is exports.
