Herald: Why are you opposing the use of LED lights by the purse seine trawler owners? They say they operate beyond Goan territory.
Olencio Simoes: This LED lights are used within the territorial water, ie within 12 nautical miles and not beyond 12 nautical miles which is itself a violation of the Goa Marine Fishing Regulation Act and no such fishing boats are registered to operate beyond 12 nautical miles in Goa. To operate outside Goa territory you need permission from the Centre. Using LED lights for fishing is totally destructive to the marine ecology as these lights are mostly used near rocky areas where fishing is not possible. The boat owners have invested around Rs 10 lakh to get in this foreign fishing method which is totally destructive in nature.
Herald: They have denied all allegations about their use of boats and have claimed that it is the boats from outside Goa that come into our water and are the one violating norms.
Simoes: No, the boat owners are using all sorts of destructive gears of fishing like use of china engine (high horse power engine), bull trawling, bottom trawling, above 60 feet vessel size, and now LED lights. Do fish belong only to the boat owners? Their methods will deprive the traditional fishermen from the fish catch. The time is not too far when several species of fish will be totally extinct if such methods of fishing continues.
Herald: They have gone on to make allegations that the traditional canoe operators are violating norms and have submitted this to the government?
Simoes: This is absolutely baseless. Every year the Fisheries Department inspects our canoes before they give us the subsidy. If they can pinpoint even one canoe that has any violations as alleged we are happy to surrender that canoe to the Fisheries Department. We also counter their allegations that canoe owners are abroad. We are all also traditional Goans and the chaos regarding migrant labour is of their creation not ours
Herald: They have said that this is the practice followed in international waters and Goa cannot be the only one to have different set of rules.
Simoes: The same rule applies to all. Further, the boat owners who are using foreign technology do not realize that the boat owners in foreign countries have to fish for a limited tonnage as per season, where as in India there is no limit for fish catch. As such all the modern technologies abroad are used judiciously and with accordance with the marine ecology.
Herald: How will their methods harm the fishing industry? They claim that it is safe and cause no destruction and that the government is being misguided. They say there is no scientific proof to counter that?
Simoes: Due to flashing of lights around that area the mother fish gets attracted towards the light and if we don’t allow fish to breed then within three to four months there will be total fish famine in the State. LED lights also attract fish from the shallow waters which are mostly juvenile in nature thus totally destroying the spawning grounds. Several species of diurnal and nocturnal fish habitats will be destroyed as the diurnal fishes (fishes active during the day) are adapted to avoid diurnal predators, but at night, they hide themselves and tend to sleep deeply, even having evolved defenses to prevent nocturnal (those active at night) predators from detecting their scent.
Herald: When the purse seine trawler owners met the chief minister they said that they represented almost all the purse seine trawlers in Goa. Who then are you representing?
Simoes: We are fighting on behalf of the 80,000 small and traditional fishing communities of Goa who are the residents of the coasts and are involved in the ancestrally inherited fishing occupation for centuries. As such the use of LED lights will totally destroyed ecology and the fish will get totally extinct as the LED lights will completely destroy their nursing grounds of several 100 species of fish.
