Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram   

A beacon of hope for fishermen

By C.V. Gopalakrishnan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM July 21. About a hundred of the fishing craft, numbering around 20,000, in Kerala, a good number of which are catamarans, get lost in the sea resulting in the drowning of about 25 every year, according to present estimates.

Search and rescue operations start only when the fishermen do not return with their catch after twelve hours. Such late response turns out to be futile in most cases since by then lives are already lost unless the fishermen stay alive after drifting very far away before they are located and saved. Fishing folk are becoming increasingly exposed to such hazards of marine fishing in coastal Kerala because fish catches closer to the shore were becoming scarce and their having to sail far into the sea up to 70 k.m. or even 100 k.m. on unprotected catamarans and boats which are exposed to the rough and stormy sea.

The difficulties of locating very small craft in distress either from the sea or air have led the Electronic Research and Development Centre of India (ER&DCI) to design and develop a safety beacon in collaboration with the South Indian Federation of Fishermen's Societies (SIFFS).

The beacon could be fitted to the fishing boats and connected to satellite-borne Global Positioning System (GPS) for alerting shore-based teams to rush to their rescue.

The GPS originating from space-directed military technology enables rescue teams to pick out boats and country craft in distress with an accuracy of a few metres on the sea. When the fishermen are in distress in mid-sea, the beacon could be activated to transmit a series of pulses once in five minutes automatically for 20 hours.

The alarm systems of the beacon are linked to shore-based receiving units for activating rescue missions. The effective range of the system is 70 k.m. The 27 MHz employed by the ER&DCI does not need the expensive construction of towers on shore and if its power is increased, its range can be extended to well beyond 100 k.m.

This would, however, require the fishing community to be persuaded to equip their fishing craft with the electronic system which could give them instant communication with the GPS for alerting the shore-based receiving unit since the cost of fitting it is estimated at Rs. 5,000.

If the Marine Fisheries Department could bear the cost of equipping the boats and the country craft with the system, it would go a long way towards ensuring the safety of the presently endangered small fishing craft.

The cost of setting up a shore-based receiving system is much higher at about Rs. 20,000 and it will have to be met by the State's Fisheries Department. The department is already trying to provide a very high frequency (VHF) radio communication system to the fishermen though its range is limited to not more than a few k.m.

Apart from enhancing the safety of fishermen at sea, electronic tracking systems also make it possible for them to plot the locations for an abundant fish catch and to sail clear of areas with hazardous obstructions posed by submerged rocks.

A negative feature of these electronic systems is that their impulses could expose the seabed to ecological disequilibirum.

An instance of this is the decline in the presence of sardines in a number of coastal regions. And this has been attributed to the fouling of the marine ecology by electronic intruders. This has in turn led to the decline in the population of pelicans, which feed on the sardines.

A natural protection available to some oceanic fish species from the fishing community is their being so widely dispersed that it is not commercially worthwhile to catch them.

These are the small pelagic fish widely scattered over hundreds of k.m.

The large pelagic fish itself has to hunt across several 100 k.m. for its prey. The fishing community is also being outwitted by the migratory tendencies of most of the fished species some of which leave the sea to spawn in rivers while the others leave the rivers to spawn in estuaries and the open sea.

Many migrating fish rely on the speed of currents. Over fishing has led to the near depletion of some fish species like the tuna and the cod. Fished species depend upon their swimming speeds to escape from trawls (large fishing nets).

The battle of wits between the fishing community and the fish species, according to the findings from studies on marine behaviour, apart from their ability to swim fast and keep ahead of the trawls, extends from their ability to swim above the large fishing nets in the case of some species while the others swim low.

The protection from swimming faster does not last very long because of the fish succumbing to exhaustion.

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