News
Time to end IUU fishing in Sri Lankan waters
This was inevitable: the unnecessary loss of, not one, but four lives due to illegal fishing by Tamil Nadu trawlers in Sri Lankan waters.
What is really shocking about the deaths this week is that, despite numerous promises and twelve years after the end of the civil conflict, the Government of India has failed to deliver alternative fishing opportunities to Tamil Nadu trawler owners and Sri Lanka’s small scale fishermen are still protesting about illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing by Indian vessels in Sri Lankan waters.
Media reports said three Tamil Nadu fish workers and one Sri Lankan refugee working on board died this week when a Tamil Nadu trawler fishing within sight of Delft Island resisted arrest by a Sri Lanka Navy patrol craft. The patrol craft was damaged by the Tamil Nadu trawler. The trawler then sank.
This was not the first time that a Tamil Nadu trawler had attempted to ram a Sri Lanka Navy patrol craft. In 2014, then Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera experienced firsthand the premeditated aggression of Tamil Nadu trawler skippers, when a Tamil Nadu trawler tried to ram and sink the patrol vessel he was aboard in the seas of Kankesanthurai. Hopefully, this will be the last time.
The Government of India through its External Affairs Ministry may well express its shock at the loss of lives, issue a demarche to the Sri Lankan Acting High Commissioner in New Delhi and lodge a strong protest at Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry but whence cometh the shock and why the protest?
According to small-scale fishermen’s leaders in the North, hundreds of trawlers from Rameshwaram, Thondi, Kodikarai and Nagapatinam cross the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) between Sri Lanka and India in the Bay of Bengal, the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evening.
The number of Tamil Nadu trawlers engaged in IUU fishing in Sri Lankan waters had decreased significantly since the end of the conflict in 2009, when more than 1,500 vessels a day were sighted by the Sri Lanka Navy. The number of IUU fishing trips made by Tamil Nadu trawlers has decreased from 40,000 per year to around 4,000. But just one Tamil Nadu trawler was enough to destroy the nets and livelihoods of small-scale Sri Lanka fishermen.
Sri Lanka had not given and cannot give permission to fishing vessels and fishermen of India to fish in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone of Sri Lanka, because there were enough and more Sri Lankan fishermen who depended on these fish resources for their own livelihood and income. Without permission (i.e. a licence), the Tamil Nadu trawlers that cross the IMBL every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evening were fishing illegally in Sri Lankan waters.
Northern Sri Lankan fishermen had made repeated requests to the Indian Government to take meaningful measure to end IUU fishing by Tamil Nadu trawlers in Sri Lankan waters. Fishermen’s leaders went as far as to travel to New Delhi in 2016 to meet with the Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to humbly request that the Central Government take appropriate measures to stop the State Government of Tamil Nadu destroying Sri Lanka’s marine resources and the livelihoods of Sri Lankan fishermen.
The Indian Government has repeatedly upheld the bilateral agreements signed between Sri Lanka and India in 1974 (Palk Bay) and 1976 (Bay of Bengal and Gulf of Mannar), which demarcate the IMBL between Sri Lanka and India in accordance with the provisions set out in the United Nations Convention Law of the Seas.
An ‘Exchange of Letters’ between Indian Foreign Secretary Kewal Singh, and Sri Lankan Defence and Foreign Affairs Ministry Secretary W. T. Jayasinghe dated 23 March 1976, contains the following statement “The fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone of Sri Lanka nor shall the fishing vessels and fishermen of Sri Lanka engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone of India, without the express permission of Sri Lanka or India, as the case may be”.
In 2018 the Sri Lankan Government amended the Fisheries (Regulation of Foreign Fishing Boats) Act of 1976 to address the humanitarian concerns raised by the Indian Government, arising from the indefinite detention without charge of hundreds of Tamil Nadu fishworkers arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy between 2010 and 2017.
Judicious execution of the amended Act by magistrates in Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mannar had greatly reduced, if not eliminated, the humanitarian concerns raised by the Indian Government.
If Tamil Nadu fishworkers plead guilty, they were convicted and given a two-year jail sentence, suspended for five years. Convicted fish-workers were then discharged and immediately repatriated by air to Tamil Nadu. Hundreds of Tamil Nadu fishworkers no longer languish pitifully and forgotten in Sri Lankan jails.
(Steve Creech is a freelance fisheries consultant and the director of Pelagikos Private Limited.)