Coastal Aquaculture and Mariculture

Unit 8- Deep sea fisheries

8.1.6. Development of artisanal deep sea fishing in south west coast
The lower south-west coast of India has unique ecological features such as the long stretch of sandy bed with rocky outgrowth, steep sloping continental shelf (40 to 54 km in the belt as against 69 km further north), and the intensively surf ridden sea especially during the monsoon. Catamaran with sail, landing a wide variety of colourful reef fishes caught with hook and line, is a unique fishing method of this region. About 2000 small-scale fish workers of the border fishing village of Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu) and Trivandrum (Kerala) districts who have been engaged in migratory deep-sea fishing for the past two decades covering the entire coast of India from Okha sea in Gujarat to the Andaman Sea in the Bay of Bengal. Kerala contributes a large share to national deep sea fish production.
Fishermen belonging to the fishing villages of Kadiyapattanam, Eneyam, and Thoothoor in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu have been masters in hook- and-line fishing from time immemorial. The Kadiyapahanam and Eneyam fishermen continued to build on their expertise to innovate and develop artificial baits from time to time to improve the efficiency of hook-and-line fishing. The fishermen of Thoothoor have been masters in shark fishing with hook-and-line and bottom-set gill-nets on catan1aran with sail. They have been improvising on the development of fishing gears for catching sharks, a species which enjoyed a good local market. As these fishermen migrate towards Kerala for fishing some of them have settled in the fishing villages of Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam after marrying girls from the localities concerned. They continued with their highly specialised fishing techniques of hook- and-line with artificial baits. Shark fishing with hand-line and bottom-set gill-nets was also prevalent in some fishing villages such as Poonthura and Puthiathura in Thiruvananthapuram district. Hand-line with large-sized locally made hooks baited with tuna meat was the simple gear used by these fishelmen. Bottom-set gill-net known locally as thathu vala, which has very big mesh size (250 mm) made with thick twine was also ill use. This unique practice involved setting up shark gill-nets at the sea bottom and leaving them there for a couple of days. Thereafter they would locate the net at the open sea by a very special traditional method of position fixing at sea. Visual triangulation technique is the method which is more or less similar to that of navigational methods adopted by commercial ships Position-fixing at sea is essential to locate the high-yielding fishing grounds such as natural reefs, cuttlefish-fish grounds, shipwrecks and so on. It is essential to locate the bottom set gill-nets left at sea also. Fishermen usually ignore lighthouse for position-fixing at open sea; instead they use landmarks like peak of mountains, towers of churches, and other elevated marks for the purpose. The fishermen term this technique as kaniyam or kanicham which means position.