BENAULIM: There is simmering discontent off the shores of Goa as traditional fishermen have raised vociferous opposition to the deployment of powerful LED lights by trawlear boats. These bright artificial illumination systems, they allege, are indiscriminately luring and ‘vacuuming’ up a wide range of marine species, rapidly depleting fish stocks.
The bone of contention is the use of excessive LED lights by larger trawlers to attract entire shoals of fish toward the water’s surface at night. Traditional fishermen, employing more sustainable pole and line methods, claim this practice is disrupting the ecological balance and jeopardising their livelihoods.
“The LED lights act like massive underwatera lamps, drawing in everything (fish) and thereafter leaving our waters devastated as in there is no fish in the sea left for us,” rued Ramesh Juvekar, a traditional fisherman.
Despite repeated appeals to the State Fisheries Department, the Union Fisheries Ministry, and even petitions before the High Court, the fishing groups allege that large-scale trawlers continue to brazenly deploy LED lights unabated.
State Fisheries officials and coastal police maintain they are actively enforcing regulations and impounding errant vessels and have even submitted this to the High Court. However, the traditional fishermen’s unions allege that this problem still persists despite there being a ban on LED lighting for fishing activities. They have further alleged that various other forms of illegal fishing are also taking place and that complaints about this matter have already been filed.
Marine conservation experts have echoed concerns about potential ecosystem damage and depleted fish stocks due to the insensitive commercial fishing practices. They warn that a lack of transparency and muddled governance could exacerbate depletion of Goa’s marine wealth.
“Unfortunately, the violation of the ban on bull trawling or pair trawling equipped with generators and the use of LED lights in territorial waters and Indian Exclusive Zone (EEZ) still continues unabated. Due to the negligent use of such destructive gears by a handful of purse-seine owners, it has totally destroyed the nursing grounds of several species of fish and marine ecology,” said Agnelo Rodrigues, President, Goenchea Ramponkarancho Ekvott (GRE).
“For the last several years now, we have submitted several written objections and had numerous meetings highlighting the illegal use of LED light fishing and bull trawling, but the department has failed to implement the ban on bull trawling and use of LED lights in the territorial waters of the State. The several species of dismal and nocturnal fish habitats will be destroyed as such the use of LED lights will totally destroy the ecology and the fish will become totally extinct,” warned Olencio Simoes, General Secretary of the National Fishworkers Forum (NFF).
“You also have to realise how they escape the law. There have been checks done by the Fisheries Department at the jetties to see that no LED lights are installed and some boats that had it were confiscated. But here, there is a boat that is permanently in the sea. When the sun goes down, they start using the lights. Then other trawlers come, and they exchange the caught fish at sea itself, and these other trawlers come back to the jetties to unload,” said a traditional fisherman, who had recorded proof of such illegal activities that were shared with O Heraldo in the past.
As concerns escalate amongst the traditional artisanal fishing communities, calls are mounting for decisive action and sustainable policies to prevent irreversible damage.