Dangerous waters: Indian fishers in search of better catch are venturing into deep sea – and peril

Anthoni Dhasan, 47, sits on the deck of his fishing boat at the harbor of Thengapattanam in Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state, peering out at the stormy Indian Ocean. It’s been a year since his last fishing expedition – the one that almost took his life.

On February 19 last year, Dhasan and his nine-member crew were on board their motorised boat, the Ruby, 450 nautical miles (830 kilometres) off the mainland, when a Hong Kong-flagged container ship reportedly rammed into their vessel, tossing the crew, like flies, into the cold, blue waters.

“It felt like a big explosion,” Dhasan recalls. “I thought this is our end.”

The boat began capsizing while the crew floated in the water, screaming for help. Dhasan, the captain of the boat, says he froze up and just hoped for what he calls “help from the heavens”.

“It’s God’s grace that we all survived,” he says. “If neighboring boats had not come to our rescue, we would have become food for the sharks.” Two local boats towed the wreck home.

Since the incident, Dhasan and his crew have been out of work while the remains of the Ruby lie in a corner of the harbor that mostly houses scrapped boats. Dhasan is claiming damages of more than $10 million, including the boat, gear and lost fish catch.

Incidents like this are becoming more common as many of India’s more than four million fishers have begun leaving the country’s exclusive economic zone – which extends 200 nmi (370 km) off the coast – for the high seas in search of better catch. Nearshore fisheries have been decimated by climate change, overfishing and the destruction of reefs. In distant waters, India’s fishers often find themselves in perilous situations, such as Dhasan’s.

But far-flung fishers risk not only physical harm, but seizure and detention if their boats drift across other countries’ maritime borders. More than 2,600 Indian fishermen were imprisoned across 10 countries in the Indian Ocean region between 2020 and 2022 for maritime border incursions, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

“The government knows that fishermen are going beyond 200 nautical miles,” says John Churchill Bas, general secretary of the South Asian Fishermen Fraternity, a non-profit that works for the rescue, release and rehabilitation of seafarers. “Fishermen will keep chasing the fish wherever the stock goes. But the government must spread awareness among the fisherfolk about maritime violations.”

Climate change and fisheries

Rising sea surface temperatures are causing a large-scale decline in Indian Ocean phytoplankton populations, a vital organism in the fish food chain, according to climate scientists. Fewer phytoplankton means fewer fish.

In 2022, the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted that the Indian Ocean has seen the fastest rate of sea temperature rise in world since the 1950s.

“The Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean and now it is warming at a much faster rate,” says Mathew Koll Roxy, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and an IPCC lead author.

In their research, Roxy and his colleagues found that phytoplankton populations have dropped by up to 20% over the past six decades in the Indian Ocean.

The hotter sea surface is also a major cause of the rising number of tropical cyclones in the India Ocean, further complicating fishing operations. In 2023, there were eight cyclones – nearly double the historical average.

To make matters worse, nearly a third of India’s coastline is eroding, according to data from India’s National Centre for Coastal Research. Mining of coastal sand and other minerals puts pressure on shorelines, as do construction projects, such as the highly controversial Vizhinjam International Seaport in Kerala, according to researchers and activists.

Finally, experts have long pointed to overfishing as a major concern.

Recent research found overfishing was one of drivers of the loss of marine fish stock off India’s southwest coast. “The availability of various species of fish … has been declining for the last several years,” the researchers write.

A study by scientists at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in 2008 showed that 53% of commercially important fish were declining along the southwest.

Vivan Mariafranso, the fisheries inspector in the southernmost district of Kanniyakumari, says trawlers, which can be incredibly damaging to ecosystems, often disturb the fish breeding season, in violation of regulations. “In the last two years, more than 200 cases have been filed against boats,” Mariafranso says.

Deep-sea fishers

The fishermen of the Thoothoor region, a cluster of eight villages in Tamil Nadu, say they’ve found an effective response to the dwindling fish offshore: deep-sea fishing.

“Earlier, fish was coming to the shore but now we have to go after the fish,” says Jhonny, a deep-sea fisherman from Thoothoor. “That is the reason we have become migrant and deep-sea fishermen.”

Around 600 motorised boats are registered at the Thengapattanam harbor, says Libin Mary, sub-inspector of the Fisheries Department, many of them dedicated to deep-sea fishing.

Sisil, 45, has been fishing since age 15. Ten years ago he switched from artisanal to deep-sea fishing. His 15-crew boat often travels more than 700 nmi (1,300 km) offshore for what he calls “a handsome catch” of fish like tuna, ray, shark, seer fish and billfish.

“Our fishing time is around a month,” he says, noting it takes seven days just to reach their fishing spot.

This type of fishing is encouraged by the Indian government. Under the National Fisheries Policy 2020, the government promotes “deep-sea fishing and fishing in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction to tap under-exploited resources.”

But these far-flung expeditions are not easy and some turn deadly.

Nine Indian fishermen died in Pakistani jails in the last five years, according to the Ministry of External Affairs. But rights activists say the number could be higher.

In 2022, an Indian fisherman, Maria Jesindhas, was reportedly killed in an Indonesian prison. Indonesian authorities had seized the fishing boat Jesindhas worked on after it strayed into Indonesian waters, according to Bas from the South Asian Fishermen Fraternity.

The highest number of Indian fishers detained for border incursions are in Pakistan (1,060), Saudi Arabia (564) and Sri Lanka (501).

“Thoothoor fishers always venture out of 200 nautical miles,” Bas says. “Starting from Indian waters to international waters of Sri Lanka, Maldives, Diego Garcia, they navigate the length and breadth of the sea because the sea and fishermen cannot be separated.”

In 2022, however, the government brought in new guidelines to regulate fishing in the high seas. According to the guidelines, fishers going beyond India’s exclusive economic zone must get a valid permit from the central government.

But despite some fishers heading out to distant waters, “Indian fishers are mainly reef fishers,” says Sebastian Mathew, executive director of the NGO International Collective in Support of Fishworkers.

According to Mathew, there are 600-700 reefs in the Indian Ocean, which “have become a common destination for fishers of all nations.”

But reefs are being hammered by climate change. A 2021 study warned that reefs across the Western Indian Ocean were vulnerable to collapse. The impact of climate change on the deep sea is less well-known.

Mariafranso, the fisheries inspector, says there was a poor catch in 2023 in the village of Chinnamuttom in Kanniyakumari district compared to the previous year because of the late monsoon. As a result, many boats traveled farther out for a better catch.

The high seas offer huge resources to fishers, says Jayasankar P, principal scientist at the ICAR–Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Kerala. “There are fertile, hugely underexploited populations that Indian fishermen aim to tap,” he adds.

Way forward

One potential solution would be to attempt to rebuild fisheries closer to shore.

India enacted its first legislation regulating marine and coastal fishing in 1980, followed by several more: In 2019, the government enforced the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, which specifically focuses on conservation of ecologically sensitive areas, including “fragile coastal ecosystems.” In 2020, the National Fishery Policy, an overarching framework, came into being.

State governments across India also enforce their own laws, such as Tamil Nadu’s Marine Fishing Regulation Act.

“Our job is to enforce the law and implement a no-fishing policy during the breeding seasons,” says Mariafranso, the fisheries inspector. He adds that the breeding season normally lasts one and a half months.

At a global level, experts have pointed to no-take marine protected areas, where fishing is prohibited, as a climate adaptation for recovering exploited fish stocks.

In India, several generic measures such as closed fishing seasons, marine protected areas, and mesh type/size regulations have been enacted to help declining fish stock.

“Measures are in place to divert fishing pressure from inshore areas to offshore waters to harvest potential resources like oceanic squids, oceanic tunas, and non-conventional resources,” according to the Marine Fish Stock Status of India 2022, published by the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute.

Another way forward, experts suggest, is the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, a unit of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, which sends out advisories in local languages via text message to fishermen, pointing them to the most productive fishing areas.

“These advisories save a lot of resources of fishermen,” says Roxy, the climate scientist.

In the end, however, the recovery of nearshore fisheries – which would save the fishers fuel, time and risk – look unlikely to fully recover unless the world deals more effectively with climate change and overfishing.

Meanwhile, Dhasan has hired a lawyer in Mumbai, after losing his ship and livelihood. He’s filed with the Mumbai police and is expecting compensation for his loss.

“This boat is like my child,” he says, rolling his fingers over the wrecked Ruby’s railing. “But it has been completely destroyed by that reckless ship.”

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Also read: How Indian fishers suffer exploitation and abuse on UK boats