PURSE SEINE FISHING - GEOGRAPHY
News: Purse
seine fishing reveals fault lines in fisher community
What's in the news?
● An
ongoing case in the Supreme Court, to decide whether the ban that several
states have imposed on purse seine fishing is justified or not, has revealed
the fault lines between small, marginal and large fishers, with the center and
states also taking different sides on the issue.
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.