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COLOMBO — Mahalingam Kanapathi set off from his hometown of Beruwala in southwestern Sri Lanka in Could 2021. Lower than a month later, and practically 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) away, the fishing boat he captained was seized by the coast guard of Seychelles.
Kanapathi was charged and tried for unlawful fishing in Seychelles waters. He was convicted and ordered to pay a tremendous of two.5 million Seychelles rupees, or about $174,000. Unable to take action, he was sentenced to 2 years in jail.
Kanapathi’s case is a part of an more and more widespread sample of Sri Lankan fishermen, typically from Beruwala, partaking in unlawful, unreported and unregulated fishing within the waters of different nations and territories within the Indian Ocean. IUU fishing, because it’s recognized, is believed to account for about 20% of the world’s complete fish catch, undermining efforts for sustainable fishing.
Whereas the huge, distant-water industrial fleets like these of China and South Korea have come to epitomize IUU fishing, in Sri Lanka the follow largely the area of conventional fishers. These fishers have from historic instances engaged in what’s generally known as “island job,” or dupath rassawa within the Sinhala language — fishing within the shallow coastal waters off small islands. And the abundance of such islands all through the western Indian Ocean — from the British-administered Diego Garcia to Seychelles, Mauritius and the Maldives, to the Myanmar and Bangladesh islets within the Bay of Bengal — offers the fishermen loads of alternative, says Anthony Thomas, a fisherman.
“We all know that it’s unlawful to fish in these overseas waters with no allow, however we will simply catch extra fish than by fishing in Sri Lankan waters, so we frequently do that because the yield is well worth the danger,” says Thomas, who, like Kanapathi, can be from Beruwala, and who has additionally skilled being caught and jailed for unlawful fishing in Seychelles. In Thomas’s case, although, he spent just a few weeks in custody. “Our boat and the gear had been confiscated, however the proprietor of the boat paid the tremendous after which Seychelles repatriated us,” Thomas tells Mongabay.
Fishing in troubled waters
He says he is aware of different fishermen who exit yearly to fish in different nations’ waters. The specter of a tremendous and a brief stint in jail hasn’t managed to discourage the follow, prompting authorities in a few of these jurisdictions, together with Seychelles, to begin imposing stiffer penalties. The court docket in Seychelles that sentenced Kanapathi, as an illustration, mentioned earlier sentencing patterns “haven’t been sending the best sign again to their house state,” permitting overseas fishers to proceed treating Seychelles waters as “an El Dorado for unlawful fishing.”
Diego Garcia, a part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, sits contained in the Chagos Marine Protected Space, one of many largest marine reserves on the planet. It’s a wealthy fisheries habitat that pulls Sri Lankan vessels for unlawful fishing: between 2010 and 2020, 91 of the 120 vessels seized there for unlawful fishing had been flying the Sri Lankan flag, in accordance with official knowledge from Diego Garcia. Most of them had been from Beruwala, and their goal was sharks.
There have been greater than 14,300 arrests in reference to unlawful shark fishing within the space throughout that very same interval, in accordance with a 2021 examine.
“The examine’s outcomes additionally highlighted the grim actuality that we have now overfished the sharks in our waters, so the fishermen should carry on going out to overseas waters,” mentioned Asha de Vos, a marine biologist who co-authored the examine.
Collection of arrests
Based on Sri Lanka’s Division of Fisheries and Aquatic Sources (DFAR), 121 multi-day fishing boats flying the nation’s flag had been seized in overseas waters from 2019 to 2021. Of those, 31 had been seized within the Maldives, 19 in Diego Garcia, 10 in Seychelles, 4 in Bangladesh, and three in Myanmar. Fifty-four vessels had been apprehended in Indian waters.
The newest reported case occurred final November, when authorities in Myanmar seized a Sri Lankan vessel carrying seven fishermen. One in all them was a 60-year-old with a number of illnesses, and one other was the daddy of a 5-month-old child. In most of those circumstances, the fishermen are typically the only earners of their households, and their arrest has large repercussions again house.
“After we proceed to fish, we frequently have nearer contact with different boats, so if we discovered any approaching boat, we obtain alerts,” Thomas says of the casual community that helps the fishermen evade arrest. “There are occasions once we abandon our gear and transfer to evade the coast guard.”
However typically they see the fishing effort as well worth the danger, so the custom continues regardless that they understand it’s unlawful, Thomas says.
EU ban on fish imports
In 2014, the European Union cited IUU fishing practices as the primary purpose for imposing a ban on imports of fish from Sri Lanka. This had a crippling impact on the island’s seafood business and related livelihoods. The EU lifted the ban in 2016 after the Sri Lankan authorities initiated steps to curb IUU fishing, together with imposing a vessel monitoring system (VMS) on multi-day boats that sail past Sri Lankan waters.
Sri Lanka has about 4,200 registered multi-day fishing boats, of which round 1,500 function in worldwide waters and all fitted with VMS tools for simple vessel monitoring. These high-seas vessels are all licensed to fish in worldwide waters, however not within the waters of different jurisdictions — usually outlined as inside 200 nautical miles (370 km) of these nations’ coast.
To get across the ban on IUU fishing in Sri Lankan waters, these vessels have interaction in IUU fishing in worldwide waters, says Kalyani Hewapathirana, director of fishing operations on the DFAR.
She says her workplace’s focus is to forestall, deter and get rid of IUU fishing, whether or not inside Sri Lankan waters or exterior. To that finish, the nation in 2011 ratified the U.N. Meals and Agriculture Group’s settlement on port state measures (PSM), which went into power in 2016. Beneath the settlement, signatory nations should stop vessels engaged in IUU fishing from utilizing their ports or touchdown their catches.
The Sri Lankan authorities has additionally ready and carried out a nationwide plan of motion, in keeping with the FAO’s worldwide plan of motion, to forestall, deter and get rid of IUU fishing, Hewapathirana tells Mongabay. Sri Lankan officers are additionally collaborating with their counterparts in Australia and taking steps to introduce VMS throughout the broader multi-day boat fleet, she says.
Which means that Sri Lankan vessels in breach of worldwide maritime legislation can have their license suspended. The VMS staff additionally displays circumstances of departing boats that cease transmitting alerts — a follow that’s typically related to vessels making an attempt to have interaction in IUU fishing undetected.
Banner picture of a Seychelles patrol vessel crusing alongside a Sri Lankan fishing boat taken into custody for unlawful fishing, courtesy of the Seychelles Folks’s Defence Drive.
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