Meandering in deep waters, their boats half empty

Marine fishing becomes a longer and more excruciating exercise for the fishermen off the Mumbai coast as a good catch becomes elusive owing to climate change and coastal degradation

Hepzi Anthony

Video Credit: Prashant Nakwe

MUMBAI: For eight fishing months every year, a mechanized fishing trawler roughly the length of a cricket pitch, is home as well as workplace for 49-year-old Vishwanath Laxmi Patil.

He had arrived in Mumbai almost 25 years ago from Kharoshi village in Pen taluk in Maharashtra’s Raigad district – about a 100 kms from Mumbai – to work in the city’s famed fishing sector. Now, as a tandel, the local term for the lead who oversees management and operations of a deep-sea fishing vessel, Patil takes care of the nitty-gritties of long fishing expeditions on the boat named Mauli — ‘mother’ in Marathi — on the Versova coast.

Patil and his six boat-mates, most of them migrants from within Maharashtra, are set to spend about a fortnight at sea. The preparations for the long haul are extensive. He watches as labourers carry sacks of groceries and vegetables, necessary stock for their time at sea, and deposit it in the lower chamber of the vessel that serves as the kitchen.

Over time, the number of days the kitchen works have gone up as fishermen spend increasingly longer spells at sea as a good catch is now increasingly elusive as waters warm pushing the fish away.

“There are times when we return empty or with little stock. At times we do not catch enough to meet even our food needs on the boat; then we make do with dal and rice. We now carry a stock of rice, dal, onions, and vegetables that will last a fortnight. Fish used to be our staple on the boats,” said Patil.

Patil, like many other fishermen like him, has spent a large part of his life reading the sea, gauging how far or deep to venture, when and where to spread the nets, while monitoring signals for weather and emergencies on the boat. The recent season have been particularly challenging, he said.

“Irrespective of whether we manage a good catch or not, we are forced to return to land as fuel levels fall,” said Patil.

Despite aids such as transponders to give information on potential fishing zones, geo fencing, weather information and advisories, fishing today has become a longer and more difficult exercise, he observed.

“Earlier we would return in a day or two with the catch. Now we are out in the deep for over a fortnight,” said Patil.

“Despite that, there is no guarantee that we will return with our boats full. Sometime we return simply because we have run out of fuel,” he said.

Concurred Rajhans Tapke, a member of the National Association for Fishermen.

“Fishing is a long-drawn affair now. Boats venture out in groups to explore different ends of the sea. If catch is low at one end, we check with peers in the other parts and move accordingly. It is a case of meandering in the sea for a good catch,” said Tapke.

Fish yield has been depleting for several years, despite a recovery witnessed recently. In 2023, Maharashtra had contributed 6% of India’s marine fish landings and ranked fifth among the states in fish yield, according to the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute. Mumbai ranked highest in the state in terms of yield contributing around 33% of the total catch volume.

Maharashtra has witnessed a drop in fish production from 6.06 lakh tonnes in 2017-18 to 5.24 lakh tonnes in 2020-21, according to the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries, Government of India. This yield was 3.63 % of the national fish production of 162.48 lakh tonnes.
However, in 2021-22, it recorded a 24.3% rise with 5.90 lakh tonnes of fish catch.

But Mumbai suburban, which includes landing ports of Versova and Malad-Madh, registered a decline in fish yield — 61,773 tonnes in 2021-22 as against 77,048 tonnes in 2020-21. While fish yield in the Mumbai city, which includes the Sassoon Dock and Ferry Wharf registered a rise, the yield from Mumbai suburbs is on the decline.

Devendra Tandel, president, Akhil Maharashtra Machimaar Kriti Samiti, said there is an 8-10 % year-on-year drop in fish yield in Mumbai.

Marine fishes have been turning away from coastal Mumbai and Maharashtra waters due to multiple factors like climate change, deforestation and human greed, said Dr Mangesh Shridhankar, retired fisheries scientist.

Video Credit: Prashant Nakwe

“Fish being cold-blooded animals, tend to migrate towards favourable temperatures, both for availability of food and breeding. Climate change has impacted fish resource patterns as fishes tend to go deeper into the sea,” he said.

Coastal estuaries, the nursery for fishes, are affected by coastal denuding and fall in green cover. Effluents released from coastal cities have polluted marine waters, consequently impacting yield. Human intervention, fishing beyond the maximum sustainable yield with increased frequency and in higher quantities, has also affected fish production, added Shridhankar.

Premnath Kathin, a 74-year-old from the traditional Koli community in Versova, has been a witness to the changing tides. A fisher since he was 18, he recounted fishing in the early years, “We would return in a day or two as the yield was good and the catch enough to fill our boats.”

FROM WILTING FARMS TO FEWER FISH

Modern-day fishing along Mumbai suburbs such as the Versova coastline is now largely performed by migrant workers, mainly from the tribal belts of Maharashtra, all the way up till the state’s border with Gujarat.

Gulab Unse Vedge, 60, who hails from the adivasi community near Talasari in Palghar district, said that unlike farming, which his family still practices in their native village, fishing provided a regular source of income at the time he took it up.

Not any longer.

The lure of work in Mumbai’s boats has fallen considerably owing to the drop in profit margins and availability of better work elsewhere. “I have three sons and a daughter and none of them have followed me here to work in Mumbai’s boats,” said Vedga. Dwindling catch has meant lesser earning opportunities which makes fishing unattractive for the younger generation.

“Migrant workers entered the fishing industry in the late 1990s to fill the labour shortage as the educated, younger generation of Koli people, the traditional fishing community of Mumbai, moved on to white collar jobs,” said Tandel.

Though migrant workers initially came from the tribal communities of Maharashtra, workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, even neighbouring Nepal, have now become part of the fishing sector in Mumbai. Though there are no numbers available, Tandel estimated that 60-70% of those in the fishing sector today in Mumbai are not from the traditional Koli community. Intra-state migrant workers make the bulk of the fishing population while those from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar constitute most of the rest.

A study titled Labour at Sea: An Outline Towards Migrant Fishers’ Well-Being in India by nonprofit Dakshin Foundation, which works towards sustainable fishing, said that the predominant migration patterns show a “high out-migration of fishers from east-coast states including West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to west-coast states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Kerala.”

The western coastal states have a higher concentration of mechanised fishing harbours, but also unskilled labour from the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, said the study. Labour required at the sites were not specialised knowledge or skills but demanded long durations of physical exertion, it added.

“Fishing is an unskilled job. Migrant workers start off as labourers on land, graduate to fishing on smaller boats, and eventually move to bigger boats. Today, a few of them own fishing boats,” added Tandel.

THE FISHING SHIFT

On the other hand, Harsha Tapke, 54, from the Koli community, said the younger generation is discouraged from taking up the profession. “My son works in the insurance sector. Fishing is unsustainable and can strain resources today. Sending a boat into the sea costs around Rs two lakhs including fuel, ice costs, and groceries. Alongside, we have to stock food supplies for the crew and pay them irrespective of whatever the catch is,” said Tapke who manages the boat she got from her father. Workers are employed on boats either on monthly or daily wages whether or not the boat is out at sea or docked at the jetty.

Tapke’s husband Rajhans added that a fishing trip which costs around Rs two lakhs barely brings back fish worth Rs 2.5 lakhs, which should be considered break even costs, since it includes maintenance costs of repairing nets and boats.

Tapke and her relatives manage five boats, but believe theirs is the last generation of boat owners from their family. Many from her Versova community have already sold their boats and ended their tryst with the seas.

Kathin observed that boats along the Versova shores have dwindled from thousands to barely a hundred now.

Greater involvement in the fishing sector has come at a cost for migrant workers as well, including campaigns against them for appropriating a traditional business of the Koli community. Nevertheless, migrant workers have found their space in the trade. Dwindling catch and falling profit margins have played its role in the demographic shift witnessed in Mumbai’s fishing waters.

But that engagement is witnessing changes as well. Patil, for instance, belongs to the agri community. While he migrated to Mumbai to work, his family continues to be at Pen. During the monsoons, Patil is back at his village working on the family farm that grows paddy and vegetables.

Though Patil and those of his generation migrated to Mumbai’s fishing vessels for work, the younger generation stay away from the job. “Being on the boats is hard work round the clock. Youngsters prefer to work in small factories, where they earn almost the same amount with fixed hours,” Patil explained.

With Patil’s work having grown more gruelling and less lucrative over the years, fishing is less likely that be a strong lure for a second-generation migrant workers.

Meanwhile, Patil continues to chase the promise of a good catch during yet another long spell at sea.

Edited by P Anima

Hepzi Anthony is an independent journalist based out of Mumbai