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Govt helps turtles, hurts fishermen

Bibhuti Mishra in Bhubaneshwar

Government measures to save the endangered Olive Ridley turtle have endangered traditional fishermen of Orissa.

The livelihood of about 400,000 fishermen in the coastal districts of Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Balasore, Puri and Ganjam in Orissa will be at stake because of the government's move to ban fishing within a specified area of the Bay of Bengal. More than 1,100 trawlers and 13,000 mechanised boats engaged in fishing operations might also be out of work.

As per the Marine Fishing Regulation Act and the Wildlife Protection Act, fishing has been banned within a radius of 20 km from the coast and river mouths. This was intended to protect the Olive Ridleys which come to nest here between October and March every year.

This year too the movement of trawlers and fishing boats has been restricted in an area covering 20 km from the coast. This has thrown the lives of fishermen out of gear. Fishermen traditionally dependent on fishing in coastal areas complain that it is difficult to operate beyond 20 kms in the sea since the water is too deep for fishing nets to reach the bed. This has a drastic effect on the catch.

Trawler operators too claim that turtles don't only die due to other reasons and ask the Fisheries Department to go in for a proper survey, apart from conducting post-mortems on dead turtles.

The operators blame the government for not providing with Turtle Excluder Devices, which are not available in the country.

"The decision was not followed up properly ... Besides, using TED is not economically viable, as almost a fourth of the catch escapes along with the turtles," says one trawler operator.

The Fisheries Department agrees. Says deputy director of the Fisheries Department:

"Yes, the trawler operators have not yet been provided with TEDs." He also confirms that no post-mortems have been conducted on turtles. The traditional fishermen are up in arms because the arrival of turtles and their nesting season roughly coincides with the fishing season. Says Gunanidhi Behera, a leader of the fishermen in Puri: "We don't cause the death of turtles; why should they be the cause of our deaths?"

While that's put a little dramatically, he has raised an important point.

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