"Jillunu kaathu, uppu thanni, vaanam pura natchathiram." (Chill breeze, salt water, a sky full of stars)” This is how Neko (@neerinmagan on Instagram) describes his work landscape. “You won’t get this anywhere else,” he says.
Miles away from land, the sea offers a livelihood to thousands in Tamil Nadu. Fishermen, at times, spend a month at a stretch in the waters, working through exhaustion, uncertainty, and long silences. There is no fixed routine as work hinges on the demands of the sea — nets are cast, pulled in, and cast again, often with hours of waiting in between.
It is during this wait period that fishes are recorded, and glimpses of life at sea is captured and shared with the world.
Neko first went to sea in 2019 because it was almost the only livelihood option available. In his village, Thoothukudi, job options were limited — it was either harbour work or fishing. Many had shifted from palm-related occupations to the sea, and he followed a path already worn by necessity. What he did not anticipate was that this life, often marked by long hours, danger and strain, would slowly find its way onto screens. “There wasn’t a plan,” he says of his early days on Instagram. “I just posted one video. People watched.”
The phone wasn’t high-end. There was no microphone, no careful framing. But the sea did what it always does — drawing people in.
Neko began pointing his camera at things most people would miss noticing, such as clusters of floating bamboo that resemble underwater forests, fish gathering in swarms beneath them, species that rarely make it to coastal markets. “There are so many things people don’t know exist and that’s why I record for people to know that the sea is far more wider and deeper than they think, and the life here is much more vast than the ones found on the shore,” he says.
What Neko does is a niche kind of content creation. But he is not the only one. There are already many people posting about the sea, but Neko did not want to follow the familiar path. His videos capture the struggles, lives, and the joy in deep sea fishing. And yet, filming is always secondary. He does it because he wants people to know what is beyond the coastlines.
Netted narratives
Fishing demands absolute attention. A missed moment means a lost catch. “You wake up at 5 am. From then on, it’s continuous work. There’s no real break,” says Antony Shabu (@thenkadalmeenavan), another content creator, adding that these fishing expeditions offer a deeper understanding of the sea. “You experience everything closely.”
Antony explains that his time in the sea has taught him about dangerous species. “You have to identify them properly,” he notes. And these are the fish that make it to the ‘gram’s feed. Citing an example, he mentions the Lionfish. This visually striking, almost ornamental fish is armed with highly venomous spines. “Handling it requires precision. One should avoid the spines, process it carefully, and store it without contamination,” he shares.
These are not things a viewer scrolling through reels immediately understands. “I started making videos mainly to educate people,” Antony notes. What began as documentation has now evolved into a form of outreach. Messages pour in, where people say they now understand fish and fishermen’s lives in a telescopic way.
But there are limits to what can be shown. “The problems of fishermen…there’s a lot there. Not everything is easy to talk about,” admits Anton Thina (@fishermanvoice) with a hesitation, who brings over 30 years of experience to the conversation and 10 years into video making, documenting his everyday life. A meal of kanji on a rocking boat. A closer look at the preparation of fish being cleaned, salted, and laid out to dry into karuvaadu. Through these fragments, he attempts to show what the rarely-told stories. “There are real dangers. Sometimes, if something happens at sea, even the body may not be recovered,” he points out. In such cases, even compensation becomes uncertain. The sea, for all its beauty, remains indifferent.
Back on shore, the journey continues. Fish move from harbour auctions to markets, passing through traders and distributors. It is a chain most consumers never witness. This sequence comes with its own interruptions. In the Bay of Bengal, a 61-day fishing ban halts operations annually. For many, it is a period of repair and waiting. Some, like Antony, shift briefly to the Arabian Sea, where fishing continues. For others, it is simply two months without income.
Between tide and timeline
Despite the growing traction online, none of them mistake visibility for ease. “We are workers. We go under boat owners. Managing both work and videos is not easy,” the fishermen admit.
There is also resistance from their own communities, some have been mocked for filming. “They would ask, ‘What does he know? What would he get from the videos?’,” Neko recalls. But for him, and for many like him, this is not about virality. “I’m not doing this just to become famous. Even if views don’t come, it’s okay,” he admits.
In the waters, where the air is unpolluted and the nights stretch wide with stars, the work continues as it always has. Nets are cast. Time is waited out. Fish are hauled in. And somewhere between all of it, a camera turns on, just to make visible a life that has, for too long, remained out of frame.