KARACHI, Dec 10: Small fishermen have urged the federal government to review its policy on deep-sea fishing and impose a complete ban on it.

They said fishing trawlers’ deep-sea operation had proved disasterous for the small fishermen as the huge trawlers sweep away the entire sea resources sparing nothing for the small fishermen.

According to them, a sharp decline has been noticed in fish-catch after the revival of deep-sea fishing through trawlers. They pointed out that the recent discovery of the huge dead fish stock on the shore was an example of the immense damage that was being caused by the trawlers to the national economy.

In an interviewed with Dawn, representatives of various fishermen organizations said: “The situation is turning from bad to worse after the restoration of deep-sea trawlers’ activities in Pakistani territorial waters.” They warned that millions of small fishermen would face starvation if immediate steps were not taken against the move.

It may be mentioned here that the government has lifted the ban to allow foreign trawlers to resume deep-sea fishing in Pakistani waters. Earlier, the ban had been imposed on the persistent complaints by the small fishermen that these huge trawlers, dubbed as ‘factory ships’ had been destroying marine resources besides devastating the eco-system. They had also charged that these vessels had always transgressed their limits and intruded into the zone reserved for small fishermen. They had further complained that the trawlers had been damaging small fishermen’s nets and thus depriving them of their livelihood.

The aggrieved fishermen had pointed out that the trawler-operators often threw away tons of fish of various species, normally valued in millions of rupees, into the deep sea as wastage.

Though the representatives of national deep-sea trawlers reject these allegations, they do oppose lifting of the ban saying that “it is not in the national interest.”

They further said: “We are unaware of the paid up price of our valuable resources for just a license fee.” They, however, held the MINFAL responsible for such a disastrous initiative.

The representatives said: “The foreign exchange earning through deep-sea fish export is not coming to our net except for a negligible amount in shape of license fee, royalty and fines.

“The earning through sea-food export is solely through catch landings of local trawlers which are processed in our factories. We have no means of assessing the stock and conserving our resources in the absence of any effective surveillance,” they argued.

They pointed out that they had no record of the quality and quantity of catch that is being taken away by the foreign vessels.

They suggested that it was in the utmost interest of the country that it did away with deep-sea fishing programme and, instead, worked on sustaining marine resources by reducing, improving and upgrading the present fishing fleets.