On a misty cool morning, five men set out from Rameswaram on a boat to catch prawns near the Sethusamudram canal.At 12:40 pm, they heard gunshots. “The Lankan authorities are here, they are shooting, all of you lie down,” shouted Sekar, the owner of the boat. The other four, all of them family, ducked. The Lankan Navy boat came closer and the crew asked the fishermen to raise their hands.“I can’t,” screamed Sekar. “I can’t move my hand. Something is wrong,” he cried. Sekar was shot in the shoulder. Brought back to shore, he spent 31 days in hospital and underwent surgery before he was able to head back home.Six years later, Sekar continues to venture out into the dangerous seas near Rameswaram. “Mannar [in Sri Lanka] is only 25 nautical miles from Rameswaram,” he says. “We don’t have a choice.



We don’t get fish here anymore. All the fish are on the Lankan side. Many of us continue to go despite the dangers. It is a matter of our livelihood,” he adds. Sekar’s sentiment is echoed by most fishermen along the southern coast of Tamil Nadu.

Around 10 lakh fishermen along the coastline depend on the seas for a living. Southwards of Nagapattinam, fishermen make a beeline for the Indian Ocean and towards Sri Lanka, where the catch is aplenty. Sri Lanka has banned bottom trawling in an effort at conservation of marine life — meaning that fish continue to breed and catch is excellent in Lankan waters.“Even if we cast our nets here for a whole day, we don’t get anything,” says a fisherman. “But go towards Lanka and all you need is one hour to come back with a full boat,” he says.Today’s boiling geopolitical issue has its roots in 1952, when independent India signed an agreement with Norway to introduce trawlers and trawl nets to fishermen. Tamil Nadu’s fishermen took to it with gusto. Problems began to appear in the 1990s when the catch started to dwindle. “Trawl nets are like a plough in the sea,” says an official at the Tamil Nadu department of fisheries, who spoke on condition of anonymity.“The Palk Bay area is only 18 metres deep. It is a shallow sea meaning it is rich in marine life. And these trawl nets go right to the bottom and remove the flora and the fauna, even the fish eggs, and damage the ecosystem. Fish and prawns are not able to procreate and they have been depleted beyond permissible levels. Simply put, there is no fish in our part of the Bay of Bengal,” he says.Most fishermen in the state still use trawl nets. “Our wooden boats can only go about 25-30 nautical miles into the sea and not beyond,” says Sekar. “Yes, there is a problem and the Sri Lankan fishermen are angry with us,” he says.The fishermen issue has been a political tipping point in recent elections in Tamil Nadu. Narendra Modi, in his whirlwind campaign earlier this year, promised to end attacks on fishermen, placing blame squarely on the UPA government’s inadequacies.AIADMK chief and former chief minister Jayalalithaa has been quick to write letters to the Centre demanding a solution and DMK chief Karunanidhi has pointed fingers at Jayalalithaa for not preventing such arrests.Last week, Tamil Nadu chief minister O Panneerselvam wrote to PM Modi once again, demanding the release of 38 Tamil fishermen jailed in Lanka. He also demanded the retrieval of 78 boats confiscated by Lanka.About three years ago, the state government’s thinking took a turn. Setting aside politics, officials began to “get real”, identifying the root cause of the issue and trying to find an alternative solution to wean fishermen away from Lankan waters.Enter the tuna! Tuna fish varieties like yellowfin, skipjack and bigeye are available in plenty in the Indian Ocean and near the Andamans. In fact, India’s tuna potential is over 2 lakh tonnes, but currently we harvest just one-fifth of tuna potential.Officials in the Tamil Nadu government brainstormed a scheme to convert existing trawlers into tuna longliners, giving an incentive to the fishermen of Rameswaram to stay within Indian waters.

“The objective is to remove trawlers from the sea,” says the department of fisheries official. “Once trawlers are converted into tuna longliners, they can only go to the deep sea. One of the conditions of the scheme is that they cannot reconvert these liners into trawling boats. We need to get these fishermen out of this part of the and allow the fish to grow again,” he The state offers 50% subsidy up to maximum of Rs 30 lakh to fishermen who are willing to convert or replace their trawlers.

Groups of fishermen are encouraged to apply, so that the initial investment can be split between them and the scheme itself would benefit more families. Since the scheme was introduced in 2013, over 270 applications have been received but no longliner has yet hit the sea.“We are in the process of issuing work orders,” says the official. “Once work orders are issued, it will take nine months for the first tuna longliner to be rolled out. It is still in the pilot stages,” he says.The official adds that a tie-up is in the works — between BSNL and a sat-phone provider — to ensure fishermen at deep sea are connected. A state level bankers’ meet too was called earlier this year to hammer out modalities for banks to lend to fishermen as part of this scheme.The state has allocated Rs 30 crore towards the scheme and has petitioned the Centre for an additional Rs 975 crore. Training modules and tuna landing centres are also on the anvil. The state government is working on an amendment to the Tamil Nadu Marine Fisheries Regulation Act 1983 to allow larger vessels to ply the seas.Boat driver Rubiston in Kasimedu, Chennai, laughs heartily at the idea of a scheme for tuna longliners. “I have been catching tuna for the past 12 years,” he says. “Forget the boat, have you ever tried going out to sea for 10-15 days? There is no communication — we don’t know whether a storm is coming, we cannot call for help, we don’t have the technology to find the location of the tuna. It is a dangerous life,” he says. His crew member Ravi Selvan chips in. “We have to chase the tuna you know,” he smiles. “Wherever it goes, we have to follow. We look at the colour of the sea and find out where the tuna is likely to be. We depend only on experience,” he adds.Dinesh Singh, another tuna boat owner in Kasimedu, says the government first has to address the issue of creating a lucrative market for tuna. “The boats have to stay on sea for at least a week if we are make returns on our investment,” adds. “We store tuna in ice and salt. But after a week, they begin to go bad. The fish’s eyes become red and then companies don’t want to buy them,” he says. “We take big loans to buy a boat and to pay our crew,” adds Singh. “The government can help us by setting up processing centres at harbours.”This sentiment in Chennai is echoed down south too. Rameswaram Trawler Boats Fishermen’s Association president Jesuraja agrees. “There is no local market for tuna. The government needs to take steps to ensure procurement and sell it to international players. Only then this scheme will take off. Right now we wonder why we have been born as fishermen. It is nothing but a curse,” he says.The economics of the tuna versus the prawn and the shrimp also keep fishermen clinging to their trawlers. Tuna fishing is easier on the pocket. Diesel consumption is less and the nets last for at least three years.But while export potential is high, the market has not been tapped. Prawns sell at Rs 500 a kg and tiger prawns sell for Rs 1,500-2,000. Tuna prices though have dropped to Rs 55 a kg from Rs 100 a year ago. Tuna longliners cost on average Rs 60 lakh along with the gill net and other equipment. Trawlers, on the other hand, cost only Rs 10 lakh, all included — a smaller sum and therefore easier to procure from local moneylenders.



“Banks don’t lend to us,” says Karuthaiah, another boat owner at Kasimedu. “You say the word fisherman to a bank and they run a mile! We take loans locally at high interest rates to start off. Eventually we get stuck in that loan cycle,” he adds. When quizzed about the tuna longliner scheme, Karuthaiah simply shrugs.

“Will the government give me the money immediately? No. Can I stay penniless for a year, waiting for the government to give me the money? No. It is easier to borrow locally and buy a boat immediately,” he says.While officials grapple with an economic solution to the fishermen issue, politicians continue to rage and rant to satisfy a perceived vote bank. DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan refuses to acknowledge the benefits of the scheme.“You cannot restrict fishermen to a particular type of fish,” he says. “They have their preferences. You have to take into account marketability and price of the fish. I don’t know whether this scheme will solve the issue. But yes, it is true that both Lankan and Tamil fishermen do not see eye to eye,” he says in a rare admission. “The immediate solution is for the Indian Coast Guard to ensure that our fishermen do not cross over to the Lankan side. The long-term solution is for fishermen talks to continue,” he adds.The ruling AIADMK continues to pass the buck to the Centre. “The Centre must use diplomatic pull to ensure Sri Lanka stops arresting our fishermen,” says a senior AIADMK leader. “The state government is taking steps on tuna fishing but those waters are our traditional fishing waters, we too have rights there,” he adds.The BJP says their government has acted quickly and consistently to get arrested Tamil fishermen released. “But the long-term solution is only deep sea fishing,” says state BJP president Tamilisai Soundararajan. “The BJP government at the Centre is planning a big push for deep sea fishing, on top of the existing subsidies given by MPEDA. We need to make our fishermen aware, promote deep sea fishing and steer them clear of Lankan waters,” she says.(The writer is a freelance journalist)