Chennai: Fishermen ignored Ockhi warning

Chennai: Investigations by the Tamil Nadu state disaster management had revealed that as many as 30 fishermen in 13 boats from coastal Kanyakumari ventured into the sea on November 30, despite the weather department and Kanyakumari collectorate warning about bad sea conditions due to severe depression. The transition of depression into cyclone Ockhi within 10 hours caught the fishermen off guard, K Satyagopal, commissioner of revenue administration and disaster management told DC.

Further, Kanyakumari coast had relatively been safe for fishermen. Going by their ancestral practice of returning within a few hours, the fishermen in small boats sailed into danger escalating the mortality rate. As many as 41 people have been identified as dead during the Ockhi disaster and in case of the missing fishermen, the collectors of Kanyakumari and Tuticorin have issued notifications. The process to provide solatium and compensation to disaster-hit families is on, said the official monitoring relief work.

Ockhi also struck the land causing the death of 15 persons. Among the missing, eight people were casual workers from north Indian states hired by in the long line fishing vessels targeting tuna and sharks.  At the time of cyclone the big vessels from Kanyakumari and Tuticorin were already 200 nautical miles deep in to the ocean and returning to the coast is not feasible, but we are learning from the past.The state had written to the Centre seeking permission to use high frequency sets and satellite phone facilities, which will help the state to reach out to the deep-sea vessels in future. For the small fishing boats, low frequency sets are ordered and they can help the fishermen communicate up to 50 nautical miles. By March, the sets will be installed in a phased manner, the CRA added.

Meanwhile, ecologists warn of more cyclone deaths in future as the country has started promoting long line fishing modules targeting big fishes catering to the global market. “The greed to catch more forces fishermen to venture deep in to the sea inviting trouble and traditional fishermen are also affected due to coastal pollution,” said Dr A. Kumaraguru, conservation scientist, Biodiversity Conservation Foundation.

There are no actual numbers on how many long line vessels venture in to the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea and cyclone is a natural process mostly endemic to Ocean. When the vessels have decided to stay in the ocean, they are vulnerable to disasters and technology cannot outsmart the fury of nature, he added.