Editorial Simplified: Unclogging Our Oceans | GS – III

Relevance: GS Paper III (Ecology and Environment)


Theme of the article

India can emulate innovative solutions from across the world to tackle the problem of ghost gear(any fishing equipment that has been lost, discarded or abandoned in water bodies).


Why has this article cropped up?

In March 2018, fishermen hauled 400 kg of fishing nets out of the sea in a few locations off Kerala’s south coast. There are many such reports of divers regularly making underwater trips just to extract nets that have sunk to the ocean floor off India’s coasts, ranging from Tamil Nadu to Maharashtra.


Consequences of marine debris

  • Recently around 600 Sea turtles got entangled in ghost gear near the Maldives, of which 528 were Olive Ridleys — the same species that come in thousands to Odisha’s coasts to nest.
  • Other casualties worldwide include whales, dolphins, sharks and even pelagic birds.
  • Findings on ghost gear from across the world reveal that over 5,400 marine animals belonging to 40 different species entangled in ghost gear.
  • Nets also spillover into other countries and oceans. Ocean currents carry them for thousands of km across the ocean floor, ensnaring, injuring and drowning marine life and damaging live corals along the way. Discarded Indian and Thai fishing nets, for instance, have been fished out of Maldivian coasts.

Tackling the problem

  • The government is currently preparing a national ghost net management policy.
  • While a national policy would be an extremely welcome and timely move to tackle the growing ghost gear phenomenon, a larger question remains. When bigger violations, such as large vessels fishing where they are not supposed to, are not checked, would a policy on the management of ghost nets be implemented.
  • There are numerous innovative solutions to tackle it, if we can learn from projects across the world. In countries like Canada and Thailand, fishermen retain their used nets; these are recycled into yarn to craft socks and even carpet tiles.
  • For the first time in a developing country, a gear-marking programme is being tested in Indonesia so that the trajectory of gear, if it drifts away, can be studied better.
  • Outreach and education among fishing communities would be crucial along with policy-level changes. In one instance in India, ghost nets hauled from Kerala’s Kollam have been used to pave roads.

Conclusion

Transformation is possible, though more efforts to make the process more organised across the over 7,500 km of India’s coasts, as well as inland water bodies, are the need of the hour.


 

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