PURSE SEINE FISHING - ENVIORNMENT
News: Supreme
Court allows purse seine fishing twice a week outside Tamil Nadu's territorial
waters
What's in the news?
● The
Supreme Court on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, allowed purse seine fishing outside
the territorial waters of Tamil Nadu.
● "We
have allowed this because we thought everybody should survive, that's
all," Justice A.S. Bopanna, who headed the Bench, orally remarked after
pronouncing the order in court.
Key takeaways:
● The
court has imposed stringent conditions to regulate the extent of purse seine
fishing outside the 12-nautical-mile limit off Tamil Nadu.
● For
one, purse seine fishing would be allowed only twice a week, on Monday and
Thursday, that too between 8 am and 6 pm the same day.
○ The
Fisheries Department of the Union government had recommended the lifting of the
ban on purse seine fishing in a report submitted by an expert committee on
November 15.
States objections:
● Tamil Nadu had vehemently
objected to purse seine fishing, even beyond the
12 nautical mile border, because the mouth of purse seine net is one hectare
and it would drag out anything and
everything from the bowels of the sea.
● One
of the primary ecological arguments against purse seine nets is that they tend
to draw only the targetted fish but also at-risk varieties, including turtles.
● It
is prohibited by Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Odisha, Dadra and Nagar
Haveli, Daman and Diu and Andaman and Nicobar Islands in their respective
territorial waters of up to 12 nautical miles.
● States
like Gujarat, Andhra, Goa, Karnataka, West Bengal have not imposed any such ban
on purse seine fishing. Maharashtra has issued certain orders for regulation of
purse seine fishing in its territorial waters.
Purse Seine Fishing:
● Purse
Seine fishing is used in the open ocean
to target dense schools of single-species pelagic (midwater) fish like tuna and
mackerel.
● A
vertical net ‘curtain’ is used to surround the school of fish, the bottom of
which is then drawn together to enclose the fish.
● Purse
seine fishing is popular on India’s
western coasts.
● It is linked to concerns
about the decreasing stock of small, pelagic shoaling fish such as sardines,
mackerel, anchovies and trevally on the western coasts.
● The
scientific community argues that climatic conditions, including the El Nino
phenomenon, are responsible for the declining catch of such fish in the last 10
years.
● However,
fishermen using traditional methods have placed the blame squarely on the rise
in purse seine fishing.
Advantages:
● Purse-seine
fishing in open water is generally considered to be an efficient form of fishing.
● It
has no contact with the seabed and can have low levels of by catch.
● It
can also be used to catch fish congregating around fish aggregating devices.
● It
is used in the open ocean to target dense schools of single-species pelagic
(midwater) fish like tuna and mackerel.
Disadvantages:
● Purse
seining is a non-selective fishing
method that captures everything that it surrounds, including sea turtles
and marine mammals.