Global Policy Forum

Life has never been easy for Haji Ali, a 70-year-old fishermen, but it was never as tough as it is these days. His community's staple food and source of income is becoming scarce. "It is more then 15 days that we have not gone out to sea," Ali told IRIN from squalid Baba Island near the southern port city of Karachi. "There are no fish". Almost all residents of the 10,000-strong fishing village have the same complaint.

Dotted along the Arabian Sea, fishing communities living along Pakistan's 1,120-km coast have traditionally depended on the sea. Although fishing was never hardly lucrative, every expedition brought in a catch on which a household could survive. But a year ago the cash-strapped government granted deep-sea fishing rights in Pakistani waters to Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean factory trawlers. Their huge nets scoop up thousands of mt of both wanted and unwanted fish every voyage. Sometimes waste amounts to 90 percent of their catch. "The foreign trawler comes and takes all the fish," Ali asserted, amid several nodding heads, all eager to make the same point.

Muhammad Ayyub, another small-boat owner, returned to the shore with no catch after spending two days at sea. "Nothing", he shouted back when local residents inquired as he approached the oil-blackened water at the jetty. "Nothing at all," he added, and the faces of a dozen or so fishermen fell.

"A complete ban on deep-sea fishing by trawlers is needed. This is affecting the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people," Muhammad Ali Shah, the director of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, an NGO working for the community's welfare and rights, told IRIN in Karachi. The government first banned deep-sea fishing trawlers in 1980, but has subsequently periodically lifted the ban. Shah attributed this year's lifting of the fishing ban to vested interests on the part of the country's bureaucracy. The government has pledged to maintain "strict vigilance and a tough punitive regime" to safeguard the interests of small fishermen and check incidents of poaching.

According to statistics from the Karachi harbour office - the official base for local fishermen - in September the catch was 25 percent down on the same period last year. Anecdotal evidence suggests the catch is down by up to seventy percent. The daily average catch is 350 mt, with 50 to 60 boats sailing out every day from the Karachi coastal strip alone. "The indicators are not very encouraging at all," Syed Tayyab Naqvi, the head of Karachi Fisheries Harbour Authority, told IRIN.

According to an international study posted at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation website, annual discards in commercial fisheries are estimated as averaging 27 million mt, ranging overall between 17.9 mt and 39.5 million mt. Shah said commercial trawlers only kept the commercially viable species and threw away the rest, thereby not only polluting the sea but also denying catches to the smaller, local fishermen. "They cause wastage and damage marine life, besides destroying the ecology," he noted.

A government official told IRIN that the government had lifted the ban this year on an experimental basis. "We wanted to see how much revenue the foreign trawlers will give to the government," the official, who declined to be named, said. Pakistan's average annual fish exports stand at US $150 million. In 1998/99, when deep-sea fishing was allowed for that year, the government earned only $8.2 million from them. However, sources in the fisheries department said the government should have earned close to $128 million. No explanation as to why that did not happen was given.

Fisheries officials say the destitution of the fishing community - estimated to number between 250,000 and about 10 million - cannot be solely attributed to the commercial exploitation of marine fish. "There are many factors that are affecting the fishing community, reducing their income and making their lives miserable," Shah noted. "The entire country's waste is being thrown in the sea, which has polluted the coastal waters," he noted. The pristine blue and coral-green sea near Karachi has turned into a dark, oily, filth-littered mess. "This has damaged the ecology and the fish stock," he said.

Documents published by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) confirm that 70 percent of the world's marine fish stocks have now been depleted, and that this situation poses serious nutritional problems for millions of people.

Rafiq Pariar, a teacher at Baba Island and an activist fighting for fishermen's rights, told IRIN that fishing communities were in deep distress because of financial woes and the absence of any government support. The cost of a day-long expedition on a small fishing boat was $50, which almost equalled the value of a full catch at harbour. "This makes fishing unsustainable," he said. Naqvi said that according to government estimates a fishing household's monthly income was $50, which was far too little to survive. Traditionally fishing families are large.

"Most of the fishermen are extremely poor and live in squalid conditions. Only a minority are rich," Naqvi added, explaining that the community needed health and education for their children to break the vicious cycle of poverty. However, according to Pariar, no government has ever seriously addressed the needs of the coastal people.

Greenstar Marketing, a non-profit-making organisation in association with the Fishermen's Cooperative Society, launched a unique programme this year to try to bring down the high population growth in the community. Erum Sattar, the national information manager at Greenstar Marketing, told IRIN that a radio programme dedicated to the coastal fishing communities had been launched this year to address the problem of family planning.

As the areas inhabited by the scattered community are extremely remote and hard to reach by means of conventional transport, the radio programme was seen as a useful tool for reaching the fishermen, whether on land or at sea, he said. Once a week, the radio show, presented by a medical doctor, highlighted various health and hygiene issues, and focused on matters related to childbirth and contraception, Sattar added.

Naqvi said his organisation was trying to encourage fishermen to modify their boats and improve the standard of fish storage. He said the task was complicated by the fact that the community, having practised fishing for generations, tended to resist change. He has introduced plastic bags to replace wicker baskets - much to the annoyance of the wicker- basket-makers - and has told the fishermen to improve the standard of cold storage facilities in their boats to ensure that their catches are still fresh on landing. "We are just endeavouring to enhance fishermen's awareness," Naqvi concluded.

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