Fishing ban ends in TN, but fewer boats to venture into sea

Chennai, June 15 (IANS) Even as the fishing ban in Tamil Nadu ended on Monday midnight, less fishing boats are likely to venture into the sea for deep-sea fishing. Around 1,200 fishing boats are attached to the Kasimedu fishing harbour and only about 350 of these are likely to venture into the sea on Tuesday.

Officials with the fishing harbour said that most of the fishing boats require maintenance and repair and hence these cannot go into to sea. Most of the boats will complete the maintenance work and take to the sea in a fortnight, officials said.

Another issue faced by the fishing harbour and fishermen is that there is no money for maintenance as most of the fishermen have not been working since lockdown commenced.

Most of the fishermen who frequent Kasimedu market are from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and a large number of these fishermen have left for their home states following lockdown and lack of jobs.

At present the wholesale fish stalls of the Kasimedu market are functioning and with the lockdown getting lifted the retail market will also be opened as the fishermen community is expecting a government announcement on the opening of the retail market soon.

Rajesh Thomas, a software engineer with an MNC while speaking to IANS said, "We were regulars at the Kasimedu market where most of the Chennai populace go to purchase fish. However, the market was shut down and fish was a rarity and we expect things to be normal, maybe in a week's time."

The market will be abuzz once the number of fishing boats ventures into the sea increases and even if a boat goes into the deep sea, it will return back in more than a week's time and only then the market will normalize.