Kerala has pioneered a fisheries management technique by putting annual ban on trawling during the monsoon season. The initiative taken by Kerala fisheries is now used by many coastal States. As the monsoon season starts in Kerala, one large section of the State’s working class will remain relatively idle — fishermen and fishworkes in the trawl sector of Kerala’s fisheries.
The annual 45-day ban on trawling in the State’s waters came into force on June 15. As a fisheries management tool, a forced holiday for relatively destructive fishing techniques like trawling makes sense for the long-term conservation of marine resources. Around the world there has been a growing movement against the use of bottom trawls, especially in tropical, multispecies waters.
Kerala’s annual monsoon trawl ban thus follows international trends in fisheries resource management, where fishing closures are used to revive nearly collapsed fisheries or sustain potentially over-fished fisheries. Kerala government has enacted the Kerala Marine Fisheries Regulation Act to enforce measures to regulate the number of fishing crafts in the State’s waters and the resultant pressures on coastal and marine resources.
The principal motive of the ban is to conserve fast-dwindling fish stocks by ensuring the right conditions for resource and habitat rejuvenation. Apart from the ban’s resource conservation value, the annual fishing holiday has another welcome spin-off — the potential to prevent violent physical conflicts between the artisanal small-scale sector, operating traditional craft such as the catamaran, and the mechanised sector, which comprises inboard-powered vessels.
