People “fish” by simply throwing dynamite into the water
In what may be a return to an outdated and wasteful custom, people in fishing towns throw dynamite into the water – to catch fish.
like Watchman According to reports, this method known as “blast fishing” is illegal in most parts of the world, including the waters around the island of Sri Lanka, where the rise of the harmful practice is devastating local communities.
“Everything within a 100-metre radius of the explosion was destroyed – coral reefs, marine plants and animals,” Wilson Pereira, a fisherman and supplier from the Sri Lankan village of Salpayaro, told the newspaper. The fisherman said that the waters, which were once full of life, had been decimated by this reckless practice.
People throw small explosives such as gelignite, which is made of Nitroglycerin And Place nitrocellulose gel in a wood pulp stick, or water gel sticks, in the water and wait for the dead fish to rise to the surface, where they can be netted.
It is as brutal as it is simple, and as Pereira explains, the appeal of this method lies in its simplicity and ease of use since it only requires two or three people as opposed to the 25 or so needed for a proper fishing crew.
While there are short-term benefits for explosive anglers — including that the harvest can reach 2,200 pounds of fish in one go, versus the 50 or 60 pounds one gets with traditional methods — its long-term effects are numerous. Not only does blast fishing destroy marine plants, the report explains, it can also affect fish production, leading to shortages that affect the livelihoods of fishermen in Salbajaro and other areas that rely primarily on fishing.
“An entire generation (of fishermen) will suffer extreme poverty (due to explosive fishing),” Pereira said.
While governments like Sri Lanka’s have succeeded in seizing explosives near shores that were likely used to catch explosive fish, many slip through the cracks. As government officials said WatchmanMonitoring the seas surrounding Sri Lanka is a difficult task.
“The navy is stationed in limited areas and when we are informed of an incident, it is deployed to the relevant areas,” Susantha Kahawatta, head of the country’s fisheries department, told the newspaper.
Although it is by no means a new phenomenon — a 1903 short story by American writer Frank Norris called “The Passing of Cock-Eye Blacklock” focuses on similar difficulties in enforcing fishing operations off the coast of California — there has been a marked increase in the practice In the last years. As a 2021 meta-analysis notes, “bombings are widespread, misreported, and persistent,” and are the cause and effect of complex social and economic issues in the regions where they appear to be growing.
Overall, this harmful practice is incredibly harmful to the environments and livelihoods of the areas where people practice it. But like many other destructive acts, people will continue to do it as long as they can get away with it.
More about bad water: A man has been arrested for dropping a chemical into swimming pools using a drone
