Sassoon Dock

Trivia about a not so trivial matter 

 

In 2011, I happened to accompany Rohini Mohan, who was the reporter with Tehelka, to Rameshwaram in the Palk Straits that separate India and Sri Lanka. She was doing a story on the firing on Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy for fishing in their waters. The reason for the problem is several but the main one, according to what I could decipher from what the fishermen told Rohini was ecological. We had over-fished in the Indian waters with trawlers while the Sri Lankans were more careful about how they fish forcing the fishermen to go into their waters over and above a quota or time frame that they are mutually agreed upon by the two countries.

One of the points mentioned by the fishermen who worked on the boats were:

a) The boats are owned by powerful men with connections

b) The diesel is subsidised

If you follow fisheries news from around the world, you will realise that like agriculture, fishing in the sea is subsidised by almost all governments in multiple ways. This allows them fishing boats to exceed go deeper and farther and stretch beyond what is commercially possible by most fishermen.

These are images of fuel drums and the fuelling station at Mumbai's Sassoon Dock.

Further Reading:

Fishing for shrimp but netting jail time.

Rohini Mohan and her writing. 

My photographs of fishermen of Palk Straits

Fishing subsidies and the health of the ocean WWF

India's first attempt at regulating trawling underway in January 2019.

Mumbai is killing the fishing villages that made the city.