A section of fishermen on Wednesday expressed concern over not receiving weather updates from the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) on the seas.
At a workshop on fisheries warnings at the College of Fisheries, Keshav Mogera, a fisherman from Bhatkal, said, “We were receiving updates from INCOIS in Hyderabad. But it stopped sending them two years ago.”
Mr. Mogera said when fishermen contacted the centre, they were asked to get in touch with its newly-opened centre in Karwar. “We called the Karwar centre and they took our phone numbers. But we are still not receiving weather updates,” he said.
Another fisherman said it would not serve any purpose if weather updates were made known to fishing boat owners at the harbour. While expressing the need for a mechanism to deliver updates to fishermen on the seas, he said services of vessels of Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy, which will be near the fishing boats, could be used for this.
Officials from the Indian Meteorological Centre, Bengaluru, who conducted the workshop, asked the fishermen to write their issues. Officials from the Department of Fisheries did not respond. Later talking to The Hindu, Mahesh Kumar, Deputy Director of Fisheries, Dakshina Kannada, said a technical glitch has led to few fishermen not getting the INCOIS weather updates.