Facing Vanishing Catch, Massive Pollution, India's Village Fishermen Barely Holding On

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Held in a vice by private financiers and reeling under relentless external threats - displacement, mechanised trawling, industrial activity and the changing nature of the seas - traditional fishing communities along India’s 7600 kilometres of coastlines, numbering 1.1 billion people at the last census, are in deep trouble. "The coastline is being used like a dustbin," charges Arjilli Dasu, chief executive officer of the Vishakhapatnam District Fishermen’s Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA), which operates in 25 fishing villages near Vishakapatnam.

"There are coastal industrial ‘corridors’ with major thermal, steel, petrochemicals, fertilisers and 6-lane highways," he explains, "And a port almost every 50 kilometres, all of whom appear to have forgotten that traditional fishing communities have lived and fished off these coastlines for centuries." Effluents from these industries have turned Vishkhapatnam’s blue seas to a dull grey and are choking the fish to death. "We are witnesses," says Chodipalli Yerrinaidu, member of the Traditional Fishermen’s Society set up by DFYWA in Pudumadaka 4 years ago. "We see small dead fish floating in the seas, we see dead tortoises on the beach."

"Because of effluents being released into the sea, the fish have gone 40 kilometres away," says 44-year-old fisherman Gantipalle Chinnakasulu, from Wadapeta village, some 60 kilometres away from Vishakhapatnam. "We don’t even get the old varieties any more." Dasu says that around 30-35 indigenous fish species have disappeared, including varieties of shark, big snapper and the well-known delicacy, ‘Bombay duck’.

Industrial activity has also displaced 120 fishing villages near Vishakhapatnam in the last 5 years alone. The Indian government’s Gangavaram port here gave jobs to just 600 of the 3000 fishermen it rendered jobless. Fishermen’s unions speak of overall government neglect of traditional fishermen, with help being extended only to the mechanised trawling sector.

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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47955

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