Who is responsible for the barren seas of Negombo?

By Dimithri Ratnayaka

Prawns are scarce to catch in the seas adjacent to Poruthota, a village located between Kammaththurei and Palangathurei in the Negombo area. This situation has now become a bane to the fishing community of the area. 

For Risny, a resident of Poruthota, going out to sea and catching prawns has become an unsustainable business. He says the ocean which gave a rich harvest in the past has now become a veritable dessert: “This has been happening over the last five years and going out to sea in search of prawns is unprofitable. So I buy prawns from the Peliyagoda market and sell it locally, this is how I make ends meet.” 

Risny’s entire routine has changed; in the past he would take his thoni and go out to sea at six in the morning, and on a good day, come back with a haul as big as 100 kilos of prawns; but all that has changed and now he would be lucky to get between 10 to 30 kg, if he went out to sea. 

Unsustainable fishing methods 

When I asked him about the reason for this decline in the prawn harvest, he names the main culprit to be the unsustainable fishing methods used by some fishermen. “These fishermen go at night in their motor boats and trap the prawns and catch them with their surukku nets. They have no regard to what they catch i.e. whether they are baby prawns or prawns about to release eggs. It is no surprise therefore that the prawn harvest is depleting,” he says. 

The surukku net is a large trap that is let down deep into the water, which is used by fishermen once they locate large schools of fish. Once the fish are caught in the loop of this large net, the boats pull in different directions and slowly tighten the neck of the net. However, the unsustainable factor comes mostly due to the dynamite they use to stun and subdue the fish in the net. This not only destroys the adjacent habitat, but taking out large quantities of fish leaves the whole environment barren.

Risny says since this kind of fishing requires a certain amount of coordination and organisation, it is done by the more affluent fishermen who have the resources to mount an operation to drag-net the sea. The problem he says is that it leaves the small time fishermen with nothing to harvest, apart from the long term damage it causes. 

Unsustainable solid waste disposal and management

There are other fishermen in the area who say that another reason for the lack of prawns in the seas in the Negombo area is the solid waste disposal and management which is done in a way that is far from sustainable. 

Polythene and plastics which are being dumped into rivers and canals seep into the ocean and clog the ocean floor, which in turn prevent the prawns from spawning. They say that it also affects their feeding cycle. Prawns feed on plankton, small forms of seaweed, small prey like blood worms. They will even feed on certain other species of shrimp known as mud shrimp. 

According to a website www.whalefacts.org, which describes prawn habits, ‘...they mostly acquire their food either by sifting through the sand of the ocean floor or filtering the surrounding waters.’ Prawns also tend to burrow in the sand to hide from predators and during the early larval stages they tend to live closer to the sea floor so as to get better access to their food. 

On investigating this story further with National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), I found that according to research done by them, in the year 2002, 8,000 pieces of plastic were found to have been released into the sea on a daily basis via the Kelani River and 4,000 per day from the Wellawatte Canal. Even though no proper research has been done in the Negombo area, the reports coming from the fishermen themselves should prompt a serious look into this growing issue. 

All of this plastic waste is getting deposited on the ocean floor, affecting the life cycles and food chains of all marine life. To a sea turtle, a floating plastic bag looks like a jellyfish, and plastic pellets – the small hard pieces of plastic from which plastic products are made – look like fish eggs to seabirds. Drifting nets entangle birds, fish and mammals, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to move or eat. As our consumption of plastic mounts, so too does the danger to marine life.

Lack in flow of knowledge

According to research, one of the main issues Sri Lanka faces is a lack in the flow of knowledge on these issues to the general populace, who need to understand that sustainable waste management is a necessity, especially in this area. 

While there have been recent attempts at waste segregation, according to reports, its implementation has not been wholly successful. And although some efforts have been made to recycle plastics and other material, and several beach clean ups have been attempted, these efforts are mostly inefficient, and none of these efforts have helped in solving the problem of waste which has already been deposited in the ocean bed. 

Needless to say, that the loss in the sea harvest is creating a number of issues for several communities; and yet there has been no proper research done to unearth the reasons behind the barren seas. It seems like there is a lot of guesswork going on with no proper research or implementation, but nothing concrete is taking place. 

Even agencies like NARA need funds to do proper research; they have several internal documents from their research already done, which point towards the issues, but none which have been published, as they have not undergone the necessary processes. NARA sources say they have not done any major study regarding the matter apart from the internal reports, but that they have informed the relevant authorities, the Central Environmental Authority, the Department of Coast Conservation and the Ministry of Environment. 

Proper research should be done to find the causes for these issues and solutions need to be found so that fishermen and others who are affected will not revert to falsely accusing property developers, hoteliers, industries and other fishermen. The livelihood of the small industry fishermen is important on an individual basis, but these fishermen might be facing these problems which may well be due to their own making due to unsustainable fishing practices and marine pollution. Therefore, only research, knowledge and action by the relevant Government authorities with the cooperation of the affected fishermen can save this situation.

(The author is an aspiring marine biologist who will be reading for the Bachelor of Environment at the University of Macquarie, and will commence her first semester this year.)