EDITORIAL: It turns out that the use of illegal small nets and juvenile fishing in the waters off Balochistan coast is wreaking havoc on the marine life cycle in those parts, killing undersized fish and driving traditional fishermen to desperation right under the provincial administration’s nose and nothing has been done about it so far except issuing a notice that nobody’s cared about.
This situation is as serious as it gets because it throws up a number of extremely important questions all at once that authorities must not only answer but also address. And they must do it fast enough to bring all the illegal fishing to a halt, protect the reproductive cycle of the fish in question, and also save a large number of fishermen from extinction.
One, how is it that illegal nets, smaller than one centimetre, are being used often enough to put the reproductive cycle of the fish that feeds the coast as well as markets farther in-country in question and it had to take a mysterious online video to pull the lid over the scam? It’s not as if fishing activities of local people have not been followed very closely by the government; for a whole variety of reasons. Only a transparent investigation will tell, then, whether this is a case of plain oversight or old fashioned collusion. And the sooner that happens, the better.
Two, fisheries cater to more than coastal households and local retail markets, but also chip in to the export basket. And here we have a case of illegal activity targeting juvenile fish just when their reproductive cycle is about to begin.
The law forbids small nets because these fish need to grow to full size, reproduce, and benefit everybody in the food chain. But by turning a blind eye to small nets we’re not just encouraging illegal fishing, rather we’re putting the very life cycle and habitat of the fish at risk.
If too many are killed before they grow big enough to reproduce and keep up the population balance, the entire ecosystem will suffer; and that includes meal mats in coastal villages, shelves in local stores, and also the trade balance. Has anybody given this any thought at all?
And three, local people resort to such tactics, at the risk of overstepping the law, largely because they are desperate and have few legitimate ways to sustain themselves. So, what are we doing about this particular problem? Every now and then they hear that their fortunes are about to change because of this or that project, yet in all these long years things have remained the same.
Even CPEC, which kindled hope like never before, is still a mystery to a lot of the local Baloch population. Any measures meant to address this problem with sincerity will have to take this matter into consideration as well.
Some government actions, and often enough inaction, can affect a lot of things at the same time. Local Baloch tribesmen looking to make a quick buck from illegal fishing do not consider, because they just don’t know, that they are trading nickels for dimes, so to speak, because if they let the fish grow bigger and produce more fish they’d have a larger catch and draw more money at the market. And what they’re doing will deplete the fish population to the point that everybody in the region will eventually be driven to starvation.
At the end of the day, though, such things are the responsibility of provincial governments. And the Balochistan government must now not only check all such things, but also the many reasons that make people do them. Otherwise, it will just find itself going through the same cycle over and over again; just that the fish population won’t be the same every time.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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