KARACHI, July 31: After waiting out a month-long ban on catching shrimps, fishermen on Tuesday evening sailed out to the open sea with no fear of being stopped or punished for doing so.

“The boats that are going out for 24 hours left earlier today. As for those who will go fishing for only morning till afternoon, which we call ‘hella’ in our local lingo, they are preparing to leave today,” Haji Ismail Bhatti of Bhit Island told Dawn on Tuesday evening.

“So they’ll be up to leave early at 4am and will return at around 6pm. They will then reach home at around 8pm after selling their catch to bring home some money for their families to cook food. If not that then they will bring home some leftover catch. Getting a couple of hours of sleep, they will be up and ready for the following day’s trip in the early hours of the morning once again.”

“Such is the hard life led by us fisher folk,” said Mr Bhatti.

“You can’t imagine how we spent this past month. Some of us even had to survive on charity even though the ban was only on catching shrimps as none of us were allowed to take our boats and trawlers out during this time even for catching fish,” he said.

“There were some four checkpoints of Customs, Coast Guards, Maritime Security Agency and Karachi Port Trust, all located opposite Manora. And none of them allowed the boats to pass through however much we argued that we were going to catch fish, not shrimps,” he said.

“On the other hand, there are no law-enforcement officials stationed at Ibrahim Hyderi and the boats easily pass though there,” said the Bhit Island resident.

Asked why the fishermen were going out on short trips when the ban had been lifted, he said that that was because the sea was still pretty rough.

“It will remain rough until the middle of August. We will go for trips of a week to 15 days after that,” he said.

Apart from Bhit Island, over 1,000 boats carrying some 20,000 fishermen from different coastal villages, such as Baba Island, Ibrahim Hyderi, Rehri Goth, Chashma Goth, Shireen Jinnah Colony, Gizri, Abdullah Goth, Abdul Rahman Goth, Kaka Village, Soomar Goth, Mubarak Village, Sanghu Goth and others situated on the 129-kilometre-long coastal belt left or were making preparations to leave for fishing.

Usually the government imposes a ban on fishing for two months every year in June and July as this is considered the fish breeding season.

But this year the ban had been reduced to one month in view of the hardship faced by the fishing community.