India loses revenue annually to illegal foreign fishing: Green Peace

--Odisha’s fishing sector affected

BHUBANESWAR: For the second time this week activists from the Greenpeace ship My Esperanza exposed illegal fishing practices within the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), off the Andaman Islands coast. The Tuna long liners Balaji number 5, 6 and 9, were in violation of the Letter of Permit (LoP) scheme, being registered concurrently in Taiwan and India. The scheme allows foreign vessels to fish within the Indian EEZ, provided they have an exclusive Indian registration and Indian owner.

Greenpeace, an organisation working for climate change, sustainable agriculture, preserving the oceans and other various environment related works across the globe, informed the Coast Guards and the Ministry of Agriculture of these violations. “We are still waiting for a reply from the Government on this serious matter,” said Campaign Manager in Green Peace India Sanjeev Gopal to The Pioneer.

The domestic fishing sector in Odisha including traditional fisher communities, have strongly opposed the scheme on the grounds that there has been no effective system to monitor the operation of LoP vessels. Fishermen assert of various instances of competition of local fisheries for both space and resources. Reports from various fisher unions, especially Balasore, suggest that the operation by Thai and other foreign vessels in their waters has impacted their livelihoods significantly.

According to All Odisha Fish Producers’ Federation president and a campaigner for the Green Peace Kameswar Narayan Praharaj, the foreign vessels have been fishing in the Indian territorial water in disguise of Indian vessels. They are providing the vessels to Indian fishermen by giving wages and receive huge amount of catches from the Indian mid sea through their mother ship, which is a clear violation of Indian rules, he said.

“We are running out of marine fish resources, but the foreign vessels are taking benefit out of it using Indian waters,” said Praharaj adding, “The foreign fishing vessels are not following the moratorium which is strictly followed by the Indian fishermen, even they are also violating the LoP guidelines by fishing within 12 nautical miles off the Indian shore, but Indian Government is not taking any action against them, which is very unfortunate,” said Praharaj.

In a Press release Green Peace revealed that a LoP vessel like Balaji No.5 catches about 60-80 tons of tuna every season worth half a million USD in international markets. Currently there are 79 licensed vessels operating in the Indian waters. In return they pay 200 USD as licensing fees to the Ministry of Agriculture. Public records of the taxes paid by these vessels in previous years do not exist.

These vessels are also allowed to transship their catch- a practice that encourages underreporting since it is self- regulated. This means that they never land any of their catch in India thus making it impossible to track.

“This free for all attitudes towards fishing for lucrative species like tuna in our waters will surely lead to a total collapse of fisheries in India like it already has in industrial fishing nations like Taiwan. Poor formulation, regulation and implementation of the LoP have made the Indian EEZ an attractive alternative fishing ground. This robbery has been happening right under the government’s nose for years and no action has been taken till date”, says Areeba Hamid, oceans campaigner with Greenpeace India on-board the Esperanza.