At a time when concerns grow deeper and discussions louder on how to find a way out of the corner the fisheries sector has painted itself into, a lone fishing boat operator from Vypeen has shown courage to take the plunge into what initially appeared to be a sea of uncertainty.
N. S. Suresh is now coaxing more trawlers to shift to square mesh cod ends in place of the traditional diamond mesh ones. A cod end is the tapering end of the trawl net where fish is aggregated as the net is dragged through the waters and hauled in.
The square mesh cod ends, with which experiments began in Kerala in the mid-1990s under the ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT), allow juveniles to escape in larger numbers when the net is hauled through the waters and pulled in as the shape of the mesh does not change or constrict itself. However, diamond meshes shrink considerably during trawling and prevent juveniles from escaping, says a CIFT scientist, explaining the advantages of the square mesh variety. Though the experiments had started in Kerala, Gujarat was the first State to make square mesh cod ends legal in 2003.
