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Bottom trawling ban: TN Chief Minister’s knee jerk reaction
The reaction of the new Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami to Sri Lanka parliament’s unanimous decision to proscribe (ban by law) motorised and mechansied bottom trawling in Sri Lankan waters reiterates the ignorance and hypocrisy of Tamil Nadu politicians when it comes to Sri Lanka per se and fishing in the Palk Bay in particular.
According to press reports Palaniswami immediately called upon the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the External Affairs Ministry and the Indian Mission in Sri Lanka to lodge India’s strong protest against the new law. He also urged the central government to ensure that necessary provisions were made in the Sri Lankan legislation to maintain the fundamental rights of Tamil Nadu fishermen to fish in the traditional waters, by exempting Tamil Nadu trawlers from its purview in the Palk Bay.
It is difficult to image a more erroneous and willfully ‘political’ response to such a humble piece of legislation. The amendment to proscribe motorised and mechanised bottom trawling in Sri Lankan waters falls under the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act No. 2 of 1996. The act applies to local (Sri Lankan) fishing boats. As Part II Section 15, sub section (2) notes “every owner of a local fishing boat used for the purpose of taking fish in Sri Lankan waters shall apply to the Director for the registration of such boat and the of the name of the owner”.
Tamil Nadu trawlers are not ‘local boats’. Therefore neither the Act nor the amendment to proscribe motorised and mechanised bottom trawling in Sri Lankan waters applies to Tamil Nadu trawlers or their owners. If the Chief Minister had taken a little more time to understand the act, he would have understood that Tamil Nadu trawlers are already exempt from the purview of the new amendment, by virtue of not being ‘local boats’.
The amendment to proscribe motorised and mechanised bottom trawling was intended to protect Sri Lanka’s rich marine resources in the Palk Bay from wanton wastefulness and the intentional destruction that inevitably accompanies bottom trawling in multi-species tropical fisheries. Evidence for the prohibition of bottom trawling in inshore, tropical fisheries is ironically available in the Chief Minister’s own state. The devastation that has been caused to small scale, inshore fisheries by unregulated bottom trawling on the Tamil Nadu side of the Palk Bay, was one of the main reasons why the amendment was introduced on the Sri Lankan side of the bay! Rather than criticizing the Sri Lankan government’s initiative to protect and sustain Sri Lanka’s marine resources, Palaniswami would better to reflect on how such a law can be introduced on the Indian side of the bay……
A more immediate concern of the Chief Minister should be the ongoing amendment to the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing Boats) Act. Promulgated in 1979, this regulation follows the legal contours mapped out by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas. The act governs the licensing and operation of foreign fishing boats in Sri Lankan waters. The International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) between Sri Lanka and India were demarcated in the Bay of Bengal in 1974 and in the Gulf of Mannar in 1976. A Tamil Nadu trawler owner wishing to fish legally on the Sri Lankan side of the IMBL must obtain a license under the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing Boats) Act. A Tamil Nadu trawler fishing in Sri Lankan waters without a valid license is engaged in illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing under both Sri Lankan and international law.
In May 2015 Noor Mohamed Mohamed Alam, Anthony Emiliyanpillai and Joseph Frances, the presidents of small scale fishermen’s cooperative society unions in Mannar, Jaffna and Kilinochchi, filed a writ petition in the Court of Appeal regarding the problem of persistent IUU fishing by Tamil Nadu trawlers in Sri Lankan waters in the Palk Bay. In their petition the presidents stated that the Attorney General’s failure and or refusal to arrest and prosecute Tamil Nadu trawlers under the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing Boats) Act was arbitrary, unreasonable, unlawful and mala fide. Although the petition was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, the petitioners’ intervention queried the Attorney General’s decision to charge, remand, indefinitely detain, then release without charge Tamil Nadu fishermen under the Immigrants and Emigrants Act (1942). Instead they argued that it would be more prudent to prosecute Tamil Nadu boat owners under the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing) Act No. 15 of 1979.
According to the Ministry of Fisheries once this amendment is passed, foreign fishing vessels engaged in illegal fishing in Sri Lankan waters will be taken into custody and prosecuted under the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing) Act. The Act permits the immediate release and repatriation of skipper and fishermen working on the arrested vessels and the imposition of fines of between Rs 1 million to Rs 100 million on the owners of foreign fishing vessels. The immediate release and repatriation of Tamil Nadu fishermen will negate the ‘humanitarian crises’ that regularly occur due to the indefinite detention of hundreds of Tamil Nadu fishermen in Sri Lankan jails. It will also ease the bilateral tensions that arise from this unfortunate and unwarranted situation. The imposition of fines on the owners of Tamil Nadu trawlers will constitute a meaningful deterrent that will hopefully make trawler owners think twice before sending their vessels to fish illegally in Sri Lankan waters.The amendments to the Fishery and Aquatic Resource Act and to the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing) Act are win win outcomes for Sri Lankan small scale, traditional fishermen. As Joseph Frances said when I met him this week “more prawns not less will be harvested by more of our fishermen as a result of the prohibition of bottom trawling by Sri Lankan boats in Sri Lankan waters; and less of our fisheries resources will be wasted, discarded from trawl nets”. About the Tamil Nadu fishermen he said, “We don’t like to see Tamil Nadu fishermen kept in Sri Lankan jails. If the government can send them home immediately, that is the best”. If Chief Minister Palaniswami can stop Tamil Nadu trawlers fishing illegally in Sri Lankan waters, that would be better still.
(The writer is a freelance fisheries consultant who has been following the Sri Lanka-India fisheries dispute since 1997)