JAFFNA/MULLAITIVU: On an early Sunday morning in November, 52-year-old Rathnavadivel Ravichandrarasa, a fisherman from Mullaitivu in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, and his friends gathered on the beach in a makeshift shed, their usual hangout spot when they don't have to venture into the sea.
Pointing to a school of dead puffer fish, locally called mullu peththai, that just washed ashore, he said, "This is an indication that bottom trawlers from Tamil Nadu were fishing near our coast yesterday or the day before.”
The puffer fish is among the large quantities of bycatch discarded in the sea from boats engaged in bottom trawling, an environmentally harmful but highly profitable and non-selective fishing method that scrapes the ocean’s bed and ends up damaging the benthic ecosystem, including juveniles, non-target species and coral reefs.
Francis Antonvictor, another fisherman, said, "On some days, trawlers, which usually come in groups, are visible from the Mullaitivu beach itself. That means they are just two or three nautical miles from our coast,” he said, alleging how far fishermen from Tamil Nadu’s east coast venture beyond the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) separating India from the island nation.
Troubled waters of Palk Bay
Trawlers from TN’s coastal districts like Ramanathapuram, Pudukkottai, Thanjavur, Thiruvarur and Nagapattinam entering Sri Lankan waters is a contentious issue not only in the Palk Bay between Mannar and Jaffna districts on SL's northwest coast, but also on the northeast coast near Mullaitivu, the fishermen said.
Unlike Tamil Nadu which boasts a huge fleet of mechanised trawlers, almost all the fishermen from Mullaitivu own kerosene-powered Outboard Engine Fibreglass Reinforced Plastic Boats (OFRPs), which are of a lesser capaicty suited only for intra-day fishing expeditions.
“This (October to January) is traditionally our shrimp season. There was a time when we could survive a whole year with the catch collected in these months. Today, most families are deep in debt. While getting up to 50 kg fish in a day was not uncommon earlier, now we consider ourselves lucky if we manage at least 20 kg,” said 32-year-old Sabamalai Reginald, a fourth-generation fisherman who started going to the sea as a teenager.
However, Reginald is firm that his children should settle on another livelihood. “There will be nothing left for their generation if we don't end this practice of trawling,” he added.
The umbilical cord
When asked about the furore in Tamil Nadu triggered by the continuous arrests of Indian fishermen and seizure of their boats by the Sri Lankan Navy, Ravichandrarasa said they feel sorry for those getting arrested since most of them are poor daily wage labourers and not wealthy boat owners. “However, when I am not able to feed my own family, I cannot sympathise with those from the other side of the sea (Tamil Nadu), who continue to exploit us even though we supposedly share an “umbilical cord” relation,” he added.
“Thoppul kodi uravu”, which means connected through the umbilical cord, was a term brought up invariably in all conversations TNIE had with the fishing community in Mullaitivu and Jaffna districts, to highlight the cultural ties between the Tamil-speaking people of both countries and to stress how they are being betrayed in the name of such a relationship.
Despite this relation, an amicable solution has eluded the conflict between the fishing communities of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The fisherfolk in the Tamil-speaking northern province of Sri Lanka are yet to recover from the armed ethnic conflict that lasted for over three decades and ended with the final Eelam War in 2009.
Their resources are minuscule compared to that of Tamil Nadu. To put it in perspective, there are 5,440 registered mechanised boats in Tamil Nadu that are suited for multi-day fishing expeditions, including trawling. More than 60% of these operate from the coastal districts along Palk Bay.
In contrast, entire Sri Lanka has only 5,088 Inboard Multi-day Boats (IMULs), which are comparable to TN's mechanised boats, as per its Fisheries Statistics 2023. Of these, only 141 (2.7%) operate from the northern coastal districts of Mannar, Jaffna, Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi even though this region accounts for 27% of the country’s fishing households.
Similarly, of the 25 fishing harbours in the country, only one is in the northern province at Myliddy in Jaffna district, which was constructed in 2019 but remains largely unusable according to the fishermen.
A line drawn in water
Tamil Nadu fishermen, meanwhile, maintain that they have enjoyed traditional fishing rights across Palk Bay for centuries and cannot be restricted by the IMBL drawn up by the neighbouring nations in 1974 and 1976. They say that the IMBL, which lies at nine nautical miles (nm) at its shortest and 34 nm at its longest along Palk Bay, is too small an area.
While asserting their traditional fishing rights, the Tamil Nadu fishermen, also note that the majority of the arrests and the use of force by the SL Navy, which has at times even resulted in deaths and damages to boats, happened when they had not crossed the IMBL.
A policy note of Tamil Nadu’s Fisheries Department stated that “protection of traditional fishing rights of fishermen in Tamil Nadu” in Palk Bay is one of its top agenda, but stresses that the state’s fishermen are being arrested by SL Navy under the “pretext” of crossing the IMBL.
“Firstly, this twisting of facts by the media, politicians and fishermen in Tamil Nadu should stop. How can we arrive at a solution when they are not even acknowledging that they are engaging in bottom trawling in our waters,” asked Nagarasa Varnakulasingam, a sexagenarian fishing community leader from Jaffna district, whose fishing nets were reportedly damaged six times in the last four years by TN trawlers. He rued that each damage cost him roughly LKR1-2 lakh (roughly Rs 30,000 to Rs 60,000).
On the day before TNIE was in Jaffna, a group of TN fishermen were arrested and their boats were seized by the Lankan Navy. Before being sent for judicial remand, they were kept in an open shed at the fishing harbour in Myliddy, where tens of seized trawlers from Tamil Nadu are berthed without maintenance.
The arrest, which triggered protests in Ramanathapuram district, was reported in Indian media as an “alleged” case of IMBL crossing. The detained fishermen, however, told TNIE that they were indeed on Sri Lankan waters when they were arrested.
Cinema and 'pol roti'
Varnakulasingam reminisced of a time before the armed conflict when he and his buddies would land on the Tamil Nadu coast after fishing, catch a movie there and return the next day. “The Tamil Nadu fishermen would ask us to bring pol roti (a popular delicacy in Sri Lanka), which they were fond of. We used to regularly exchange food mid-sea,” he said.
He would give anything to cast the net together in Palk Bay with Tamil Nadu fishermen, provided they end bottom trawling. “They have depleted their marine resources and are now entering our waters and depleting ours. There was a time when we caught nearly 50 varieties of fish, many of which have vanished now,” he said.
Varnakulasingam, who had participated in fishermen-level talks between both countries, said he teared up during one of the meetings while explaining how he lost his family members, including his daughter, in the war and how his community was trying to get back on its feet. “The Tamil Nadu fishermen sympathised with me, but in the end, they said they are helpless since thousands of families are dependent on trawling,” the elderly man added.
The issue recently gained momentum with increasing arrests and the newly-elected Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake assuring that he would put an end to illegal fishing by Indians in the Sri Lankan waters. The total number of Indian fishermen arrested in 2024 has crossed 500, the highest in the last seven years. As many as 141 still languish in Sri Lankan prisons as of November 22.
Reservation about parleys
Annalingam Annarasa, an artisanal fisherman and a community leader from Kayts Island in Jaffna district, said he often wondered if the Indian and Sri Lankan governments were deliberately delaying a solution to the conflict to prevent a cordial relationship between the Tamil-speaking communities of both countries.
He pointed to the Joint Working Group constituted by the two countries in 2016 to resolve this issue, which was supposed to meet every three months. However, it has only met six times since 2016, with the last meeting convened in October 2024, that too without the presence of any community representatives. “One of the initially agreed objectives was to gradually phase out trawlers. No meaningful progress has been made,” he alleged.
The Government of India and the Government of Tamil Nadu are implementing a scheme, conceptualised in 2016, to diversify those using trawlers into deep sea fishing by subsidising 90% of the boat’s cost of Rs 80 lakh through subsidies and loans. However, only 61 boats have been constructed and another 19 are under construction as of mid-2024.
Instead of resolving the issues or strengthening the resources of fishers in the north, the SL government has been aggressively promoting marine aquaculture along the northern coast in recent years, especially that of sea cucumber, which is exported mainly to China, Annarasa alleged. “This is going to ruin our marine resources in the long run, if done rampantly and unscientifically,” he argued.
Varnakulasingam and other fishing community leaders recently met Ramalingam Chandrasekar, Sri Lanka’s new Minister of Fisheries. “He is a Tamilian and is well aware of our issues. The present government says it would not hesitate to swiftly act on long-pending issues. We urged him to end all types of illegal fishing practices, including bottom trawling, as per the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act,” he said.
Santosh Jha, High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka, had also met the minister earlier this week and stressed the need for a “humanitarian and constructive approach” in addressing the fishermen issue and requested early release of arrested fishermen.
Catch-22
The troubles arrive not just from the neighbouring country. Ravichandrarasa said many Sinhala fishermen from the southern parts and a small number of fishermen from the north also indulge in illegal fishing methods near their coast, including trawling and the use of dynamite and powerful lights. “However, when we try to stop them, they ask us why can’t their fellow countrymen use these methods when nothing could be done about restraining the fishers from another country. There is a certain legitimacy to their question,” he said.
Pointing out that the umbilical cord is considered a sacred bond in many cultures, he said that it symbolised a culture of sharing to him. “If people of Tamil Nadu truly think of us as “thoppul kodi uravu”, they should learn to coexist and stop destroying our resources. If not, we would rather sever the thoppul kodi rather than allow it to be used for exploitation,” he said.