Trials and tribulations of a fishermen’s village

Pollution levels have increased to point where people can no longer fish in shallow, waters on their small boats

KARACHI:

As the sun begins to set on Rehri Goth, an ancient fishermen’s village on Karachi’s coastline, a group of piscators can be seen communing under a makeshift shed built at the end of a narrow path pointing to the sea.

This is where they routinely gather after returning from the waters to discuss the day’s catch and its worth in the market. While on most days, the shed would be abuzz with conversations and misted with smoke from cheap tobacco, their glum faces, and sullen stares today hint that business hasn’t been worth the reveling for quite some time.

These men who belong to the local Qasmani community have been braving the waters for generations, becoming experienced anglers who know the Arabian Sea like the back of their hands. Lately, however, they have started experiencing the ripples of what they consider is a burgeoning problem in the waters that will eventually wipe out their industry.

“It’s marine pollution,” remarks one distraught fisherman. “It’s been a boiling issue for many years but now its consequences have started affecting our livelihood. Untreated waste from adjoining industrial areas is affecting our mangrove forests and the facilities being set up along the port are severely polluting the marine habitats. As a result of this, the fish we used to catch from our small boats have started disappearing from the region,” added another fisherman who has been struggling to make ends meet for his family.

The local piscator community blames the government and concerned authorities for remaining negligent of the issue for decades; not doing much to contain the problem before it escalated.

“First it was the qabza mafia that was plaguing our lives, now we are losing land to pollution and unsustainable development,” said a member of the Qasmani fishermen’s community, adding that at 13 of his people have been massacred guarding what they call their ancestral land.

Per the fishermen, the first victim from their community was Mai Hawwa, who was stabbed to death in her own house in 1999. Whereas, the last casualty was in the year 2017 when mafia operatives targeted young Usman Qasmani while he was out at sea.

“However, FIRs had been rather filed against our dwindling community in about 16 cases, forcing us to go into hiding in the coastal inlands and the once dense mangrove forests lining our coast. Now that we have some legal reprieve from the mafia issue thanks to the efforts and activism of our messiah Late Muhammad Ali Shah, we futures are threatened by pollution and environmental concerns,” expressed the fisherman.

Most of the fishermen from Rehri Goth and Ibrahim Haideri set to sail on small boats called Horras to catch prawns and small fish waters lining the bays of Port Qasim and its environs. The mangroves forests that fence the coastal belt have been nurseries for prawns, small fish, crabs, and other aquatic life, but community members allege that industrial and biological waste from Landhi Cattle Colony that is drained into the sea is responsible for plaguing their fishing region.

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Per Abu Bakar, who is a prominent voice from the community, in addition to marine pollution, security of power plants, LNG terminals, dredging to maintain channel depth, and port installations are also becoming a problem for the fishermen. “Fishing waters and sea passages, known as fishing canals, are being closed to fishermen due to increasing energy-related shipping activities, security measures and development works being carried out for the energy terminals,” he complained.

That fishermen from Ibrahim Haidari and Rehri Goth, tells Abu Bakar, used to go to sea and creeks via four main routes, three of which are closed now. These routes include Aadi, Kadero, Charo, and Boski Sukhoo. “Only one passage called Aadi is open for fishermen’s transportation where they have to wait for three hours due to the security of port facilities. Taking this route adds two to three hours’ worth of extra distance to our commute, which has increased our fuel bills four times of what it used to be when Charo was open,” he lamented.

Ghulam Mustafa, who is a local fisherman believes that the pollution levels have increased to the point that his people can no longer fish in shallow, nearby waters on their small boats. According to him, over the course of the last decade this has affected their catch by at least 50 per cent. “If this keeps up, 10 years from now our community will lose access to all our catch from the bays and our boats cannot withstand going into deeper waters,” he told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2022.