Against the odds: Rickety boats and iron wills

The three islands of Karachi are home to more than 4,000 who depend on fishing as their primary source of income

KARACHI: Ahmed, a resident of Bhit, luges a dainty plastic boat to the shore in the wee hours of the morning every day. He saddles his flimsy vessel with a mesh of fishing nets and some hooks before paddling several nautical miles into the deep sea, with the hopes of returning with a saleable catch. But when the ramshackle boat heaves and tosses in the rising swell, there’s little Ahmed can do but hold his breath and hope it doesn’t tumble.

“It’s unnerving but it’s nothing unusual for us and someone has to put food on the table,” said the dauntless fisherman about his daily voyage into the murky waters of the Arabian Sea.

Like many on his island, Ahmed makes a meagre living from selling the fish he catches every day. But where fishermen around the world have access to motorboats and modern fishing trawlers, those on the islands of Karachi have little to use but whatever household scraps they can muster and fashion into something near a vessel called a Doongi.

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“We couldn’t afford fuel, so we started making our own boats from disposed of plastic tanks we found around the island,” Ahmed told The Express Tribune. “These boats weigh just a few kilograms, can be easily paddled by hand and the best part is that there’s no production cost involved,” he added



These fishermen set out before sunrise every day and hope to catch as many fish as possible in the few hours before the sun grows on the sea. The rest of the day goes by trying to sell the fish to the fisheries or on the streets of the island. “We earn between 500 to 1,000 rupees in a day now, but if it wasn’t for these plastic boats hundreds of us would have been left to starve.”

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The three islands of Karachi, including Baba Bhit, Bhit and Salah Abad, are collectively home to more than 4,000 people who depend on fishing as their primary source of income. “We’ve been fishing for generations; the sea is our playground,” shares Bhit local. “Sometimes our plastic boats tumble in the rough sea, but they’re quite light so we can set them straight and resume fishing.”

However, where Ahmed like many of his fellow fishermen may have found a silver lining in times of economic crisis, Assistant Director Fisheries Mansoor Ahmed Ghazi says that the government will never support an initiative which fails to meet the safety standards and endangers the life of those involved.

“This is all that we can manage right now and it’s working out for us, but we’re hopeful that there will be better days ahead when we too can use modern fishing techniques like the rest of the world,” said Ahmed addressing the scenario.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2019.