News
Mannar fishermen bury their catch as collection trucks observe New Year
Mannar Island overlooking the Gulf of Mannar is well known for its fishing industry and in addition to providing fresh fish to the market, it is a common sight to see dried fish being made on the beaches. These fishermen are not in possession of modern storage facilities in the form of ice rooms. Every morning they go fishing and return with their catch, which they hand over to the trucks that come from all around the island to collect their fish. They were never in need of cold storage or any other method of preserving fish, because this system worked for them.
This year has been different. Fishermen in Mannar have been in great difficulty because of the prolonged Sinhala and Tamil New Year and Good Friday holidays this week. With most of the workers off on holiday, and buyers from Colombo not in reach till next week, the ice trucks are nowhere in sight. They have literally been left high and dry. These fishermen say that they were not informed of this situation, because, if they had been, they wouldn’t have gone fishing this week.
With one fishing boat netting some 2,000 kg of fish per day, this week, almost all the catch has gone to waste. The fishermen are doing their utmost to make dried fish, but not all fish are suitable for this process. Some of the catch was thrown back to the sea, while the rest was buried on the beach.
These hardworking fishermen hope the authorities will take note to prevent such a situation from recurring in the future.
Attempting to make the best of a bad deal -fish being dried on the beach
As all varieties of fish are not suitable for drying, fishermen were forced to bury their catch on the beach
Loves labour lost. Thousands of kg of fish had to be buried on the beach
While the urban poor scavenge garbage dumps for food fishermen in Mannar were forced throw away thousands of kg of precious food