52-day trawling ban to come into force in state from Friday

KOCHI: The fishing ban on trawlers will come into force from June 9 to July 31. This 52-day ban is for all motorized boats engaged in fishing outside the state territorial waters of 12 nautical miles.
However, there is no ban for the traditional and non-motorized boats in the state waters.
While the central ministry imposes the ban uniformly during the same period for all states on the same coast, Kerala has not banned the fishing for the whole 61 days from June 1 to July 31. Instead, it has opted for a 52-day ban only. The ban is aimed at conservation and effective management of fishery resources and for sea safety, the order said.
For the east coast, the ban is from April 15 to June 14 and for the west coast from June 1 to July 31. Kerala, which had only a 45-day ban initially, has now raised it to 52 days.
“As the fishing ban in other states on the west coast has begun, we are hoping to get at least a couple of good fishing days because the monsoon winds have arrived in the outer seas. We have not had any major hauls in April and May because of the heat in the ocean surfaces. The fishes have either gone deep or moved to other waters,” said Gireesh PP, convener of Kerala boat owners’ coordination committee.
This year has been a very dry season and the heat in the ocean waters has been very high, he said. “Last year after the monsoon season, we had some good fishing days which made up for the losses of previous months. However, many boats have stopped business, unable to meet the costs,” he added.
While 2020-21 had been a Covid-impacted period, 2021-22 saw a series of cyclones in the Arabian Sea and also severe weather warnings and fishing ban was imposed because of that. Only after the northeast monsoon, the landings increased.
According to CMFRI marine landings data, Oct-Dec accounted for 35% of the landings while it was 28% from July-Sep. The summer months from April-June had such 16% of the total landings of 6.87 lakh tonnes in 2022. The southwest region comprising Kerala, Karnataka and Goa had the highest landings of 41% of the total 1.43 million tonnes.
The mechanized sector accounted for 75.8% while motorized fishing boats had 23.8% of the vessels in the state.