RAMESHWARAM, India — September 15, 2014 — In the Palk Strait, the distance from India to Sri Lankan waters is a mere 18 miles at its narrowest point. While fishing across the maritime boundary is an old practice, over the past decade, aggressive trawling by Indian fishermen has led to an ugly international dispute. Now, the Sri Lankan navy detains and even attacks violators, while diplomats from the two countries hold meeting after futile meeting.
One morning in July, when 60-year-old Jesurani Anthony pawned her kite-shaped gold earrings to buy diesel for her son Tito’s boat, she extracted a promise from him. “You’d better make sure that gold is back in my ears again by the weekend,” she said. The 29-year-old twisted his mother's ears playfully and clambered onto his trawler with six other fishermen.
After launching the boat from the Rameshwaram harbor in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Tito Anthony traveled 12 miles into the Palk Strait — an inlet in the Bay of Bengal that separates India from Sri Lanka — at full throttle. A little over two hours in, the GPS showed that they had crossed the maritime boundary and were nearing their destination. At the bow of the vessel, Anthony’s brother-in-law Bernard Shaw stood looking into the distance; not seeing any Sri Lankan navy vessels nearby, he called out, “It’s clear! Let’s go, let’s go!”
Anthony steered the craft into the shallow bay on the Sri Lankan side of the strait. Soon, the country’s northern shore was visible just a few hundred yards away; small boats and catamarans bobbed in the waves. Anthony and his crew unwound their nets from the motorized pulleys in silence, dropping them to the ocean bed while keeping the boat moving in an expanding circle. Like the fishermen aboard dozens of other Indian boats, they were trawling for prawns, abundant in Sri Lankan waters.
Anthony’s boat is one of more than 6,000 mechanized vessels in Tamil Nadu that regularly make the trip to Sri Lankan waters, breaching the international maritime boundary between the two countries in search of a better catch. Off the southern coast of India, the marine population has plummeted due to shortsighted government policies that promote trawling over more sustainable methods. In the Palk Strait, the distance from India to Sri Lankan waters is a mere 18 miles at its narrowest point. While fishing across the maritime boundary is an old practice, over the past decade, aggressive trawling by Indian fishermen has led to an ugly international dispute. Now, the Sri Lankan navy detains and even attacks violators, while diplomats from the two countries hold meeting after futile meeting. But, despite the risks, Tamil Nadu’s fishermen continue to cross to Sri Lanka.
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