The state fisherman's association in Goa is demanding the government fully enforce a ban on LED fishing and bull trawling, or else “they will be completed to take law in their own hands.”
Both the Goan and the federal government have issued orders in November 2017 banning the use of bull or pair trawling, as well as the use of LED lights used in attracting fish on motorized fishing vessels to fish inside India’s exclusive economic zone. But those orders are subject to “rampant violation,” according to All Goa Fishermen Union (AGFU) General Secretary and National Fish Workers Forum Vice-Chairperson Olencio Simoes, the Herald reported.
Bull trawling, also known as pair trawling is a method of fishing that involves pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats.
AGFU President Agnelo Rodrigues said that even after spending millions of rupees on buying patrol vessels for implementing the ban, the state government has turned a blind eye, the paper reported.
Goa was the first state in India to implement the bans, as a result of overexploitation of marine resources by fishermen from the neighboring states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Since then, numerous incidents of fishermen violating the bans have been reported, including three Goan trawlers caught by Maharashtran authorities in early March.
Rodrigues said that high-powered LED lights of 1,600 to 5,000 watts generate heat and can attract fish inside a radius of up to five kilometers. The heat and light harms juvenile fish and marine ecosystems, he said.
“Several species of diurnal and nocturnal fish habitat will be destroyed as the diurnal fish (fish that are active during the day) [are] adapted to avoid diurnal predators, but at night, they hide themselves away and tend to sleep deeply, even having evolved defenses to prevent nocturnal (those that are most active during the night) predators from detecting their scent,” Rodrigues said. “As such, the use of LED lights will totally destroy ecology and the fish will get totally extinct as the LED lights will completely destroy their nursing grounds of several species of fish.”
The AGFU is calling on India’s Fisheries Minister to personally intervene and take “stern action against the violators, so that they are not completed to take law in their own hands,” Rodrigues said.
