Killing fish, choking livelihoods: the scourge of plastic

Increasing plastic pollution in the sea has added to the many challenges faced by  traditional fishers, forcing them to migrate from a Nature-based livelihood to  daily-wage and blue-collar jobs

Ravleen Kaur 

Varsha Singh

Jisha Elizabeth

Nandkumar Pawar casting his net in the Thane Creek, Navi Mumbai Pic Courtesy: NandKumar Pawar 

GENEVA/BHARUCH/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘Galyat saakli sonyachi, hi pori konachi’ goes a foot-tapping Hindi film chartbuster from 1991, which features the Koli fishing community of Mumbai. The first line, in Marathi, dwells on the golden chain around the girl’s neck, a reference to the gold jewellery that Koli women among Mumbai’s first settlers, were known to be loaded with. 

No more however. “Gone are the days when Koli women flaunted solid gold,” said Nayana Patil, a Koli fisher leader from Mumbai. “Now it’s just imitation jewellery. The whole idea of ‘Koliyanchi Mumbai’ (‘The fishing community’s city’) seems like a farce now.” 

Patil pointed out that despite her father not earning, her mother single-handedly raised all her 10 children just by selling fish. “Today, I can't dream of raising even one child with an income from fishing,” she said. “Twenty years ago, there was so much fish that even 70-year-old Koli women earned their own money. The self-reliant Koli women who ruled the market are now forced to sit at home or become domestic workers in rich households.”

Plastic pollution is the latest in the series of challenges faced by traditional fishers like Patil, pushing them to quit an independent Nature-based livelihood and become part of the industrial and urban dailywage labour force. What is being lost in this enforced transition is the fishers’ indigenous knowledge of the seas, termed “non-economic loss and damage” in the climate change lexicon. 

From Alaska in the Northern Hemisphere to the small islands in the Pacific Ocean, the pollution from various stages of the plastic lifecycle—its production, transport and waste-dumping—has hit the fishing community’s health and income. “The oceans are our farms,” said Sivendra Michael, permanent secretary at the ministry of environment and climate change, Government of Fiji. “The economies of small islands in the Pacific thrive on fishing and tourism. The foundation of many of our communities, their culture and their very existence depends on them. Not controlling plastic pollution will land us in an evolutionary crisis. "  Michael was speaking at the Global Plastic Treaty negotiations that happened in Geneva in August this year.

Small-scale fishers—who operate within 10 to 12 nautical miles of the coast and supply only the local market—account for 40% of the fish catch all over the world and generate employment for about 60 million people, 90% of the total number of people employed by fisheries globally. 

India is the third-largest fish producer in the world. The sector supports the livelihood of 30 million people in both inland and coastal fisheries. The Marine Fisheries Census 2016 talks about 9 million marine fisher families in the 3,477 villages along the 11,000 km-long Indian coastline. Nearly 91.6% of them are traditional fisher families. 

Plastic pollution has emerged as the latest livelihood dampener for the fishing community which had earlier been grappling with climate change-induced ocean warming, large-scale fishing by trawlers, and construction in coastal areas. The world produces 430 million tonnes of plastic every year, of which  about 14 million tonnes enters the oceans. Plastic comprises 80% of marine debris; 50% of this is fishing-related (discarded fishing gear like nets, traps and buoys) and 30% from domestic or industrial origin. A study estimates that if this continues, there will be more plastics than fish in the oceans by 2050.

Plastic litter in the sea  by preventing the flow of oxygen and nutrients, blocking light, and reducing the number of organisms in the sea, smothers marine life. Around 4,200 hazardous chemicals are used in plastic production, which can leach out on arrival in the marine environment and potentially be ingested by fish and other marine life. Marine mammals can die of physiological stress by ingesting plastics or getting entangled in discarded nets or polythene bags. Microplastics settled on the seabed also affect species living there, affecting the nutrient supply for fish. The litter sometimes also acts as a raft carrying non-indigenous species to new locations where they could become invasive and disrupt the local fish population.

Fishers’ agony

Women sorting plastic from fish in Kutch, Gujarat Bharat Patel/Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti, Gujarat

It is hard to face the anger in the eyes of Kartik, a 23-year-old from the scheduled tribe Rathod community in Gujarat's Dahej. An erstwhile sleepy village of Pagadia fishers (those who fish on foot and small boats) in the Bharuch district of Gujarat, Dahej is now designated a Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR), the first in India. The industries here produce petrochemical products such as polyethylene and polypropylene, the primary ingredients of plastic.

“I have only heard stories about the sea being abundant with fish,” said Karthik as he showed us his 3-4-kg  catch, mainly Bombay Duck and shrimp. “This will only fetch 200 rupees,” he said. “I can't depend on fishing for a living even if I want to and might have to soon join one of these petrochemical industries as a labourer.” 

The air in Dahej is heavy with a chemical odour. Kartik showed us around the open channels through which chemical effluents from the industries  streams into the sea. "Going into the sea means getting skin rashes that itch terribly,” he said. “Cases of cancer have also increased. Even the fish smell of chemicals. Many boys have already joined the companies but there is no stability. Companies only hire them as daily wagers for 350 rupees per day.”

The 2015 Bharuch District Human Development Report noted that the livelihoods of 8,000 fisher families had become difficult due to rapid industrialisation, leading to migration. “Industries were just coming up when I started working with the fishing community in 2002,” said Usman Gani Sherasia, Secretary of the Samast Machimar Samaj, an advocacy group for fishers in Gujarat. I have seen an entire generation of children from fisher families, who grew up before my eyes, now working as wiremen, plumbers, labourers, or running teashops as the income from fishing decreased.” 

On the Mumbai coast, meanwhile, there was sometimes more trash than fish in the net, said Patil. “The nets also tear at times because of plastic litter,” he said. “Customers complain that the fish smells of ‘ghaaslet’' (kerosene). The markets are empty as a result.”

Sorting the plastic litter from the fish catch has increased the labour of  fishers, especially women, who are primarily engaged in post-harvest operations like drying fish or selling directly. “In loadful of fish in a Gunja net (a bag net used by  the Pagadia community of foot fishers), 15-20% is plastic waste, especially in the months of March to May. The plastic is burnt in the chulha to kindle the fire when we boil prawns before drying them,” said Jagdish Parmar, chief executive officer of the Kutch Fish Producers Company Ltd, a fishers’ cooperative in Gujarat's Kutch district. 

A 2016 study by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, pointed out that experimental fishing conducted along Central Kerala had clearly indicated the growing threat to fisheries, with the material collected in the nets from near shore areas having huge quantities of trash, especially plastics and pieces of net.  

Creek fishing impaired too

Creeks are an important source of fish. “Creek fishing can sustain generations,” said Devendra Tandel, a seventh-generation Koli. Tandel has quit fishing and taken up a job in the banking sector but continues to advocate for fishers as the president of the Akhil Maharashtra Machhimar Kruti Samiti. “During the Covid-19 outbreak, a stark change could be seen. When industries in Taloja (an industrial area in Navi Mumbai) shut down, fish was back in the creek, but the day they reopened, thousands of fish died.”

“During high tide, plastic waste also gets stuck in the mangroves, which are an important breeding ground for fish,” said Parmar.  “There are thick layers of plastic on some patches of the seabed and riverbed, affecting the breeding and nutrient access of the fish, thereby reducing the variety of fish as well as the quantity,” added Sebastian Rodrigues, general secretary of the National Federation of Small-Scale Fishworkers. 

Since 2008, Nandkumar Pawar, a fisherman in Thane for 35 years, has been trying to petition the government against pollution in the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary, which is a Ramsar site or a protected wetland under the international Ramsar Convention. The creek supported 20 fishing villages in the vicinity. 

“I have witnessed the transformation first-hand,” said Pawar. About 80% of people have quit fishing in the Thane-Navi Mumbai region thanks to pollution. Many have become security guards, auto-rickshaw drivers or construction labourers. The younger generation is educated so they are going for better jobs, but one can see nets and boats lying unused outside their houses, a reminder of the glorious past when seasonal fishing was enough for a family’s survival for the entire year," 

Since 2008, Pawar has also been leading fortnightly clean-up drives in the Thane creek and surrounding mangroves. “The litter has only gone up in all these years,” he said. “When we began, we would collect about a tonne of plastic waste from one site in two hours. This year, we collected 10 tonnes from the same site in two hours.”

Mumbai’s  Deonar and Kanjurmarg dumping grounds (the Deonar landfill is one of the largest dumping grounds in Asia) are on the banks of Thane creek. “The waste overflows into the mangroves during high tide, and the polythene bags in it choke fish,” said Pawar. 

Nurdle spill during transport is a rare but monumental cause of trouble for fishers in coastal belts. Nurdles are small pellets (less than 5mm) melted down to manufacture plastic products. In May this year, a shipwreck off the Kerala coast landed fishers in debt. “We could not get a normal fish harvest this monsoon. In Thiruvanathapuram, nurdles have accumulated on the coast and sea walls and inside the bodies of fish. Boat engines also got damaged as nurdles got stuck in their propellers,” Jackson Pollayil, state president of the Kerala Swatantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation, told The Migration Story. 

A Greenpeace report on the impact of nurdles spills in one village of Kerala, Pulluvila, pointed out that women fish vendors, who previously earned a net profit of at least 3,000 rupees per day, had seen a significant drop in sales due to customers’ concerns about contaminated fish. “An average fishing family in Pulluvila has lost an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 rupees per month since the incident,” said the report.

At the global plastics treaty negotiations, indigenous community representatives from Alaska raised concerns about microplastic contamination in their traditional sea foods like walrus and seals. “The Arctic Ocean has become a hemisphere sink for chemicals and plastic waste arriving from all continents,” Vi Waghiyi, an indigenous Yupik tribal from Alaska and part of the Alaska Community Action Network told The Migration Story.  The Arctic has the largest amount of microplastics. All the pollution that we heard about in the talks here (in Geneva) ends up in my backyard within five days. Microplastics are being found in our children's brains and pregnant women’s placentas, leading to cancer, miscarriages and birth defects. This is not a burden that we created.” 

Grim data

Fishers unloading their catch at Veraval in Gujarat after being at sea for 15 days Ravleen Kaur/The Migration Story

Eighty percent of the plastic waste reaching the marine environment is land based—dumped near water bodies and carried by rivers, drains and wind. “Eighty-eight percent of this keeps floating close to the shoreline, 10% sinks to the seabed and 2% goes off-shore from the surface,” said Pravakar Mishra, a scientist at the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), Government of India. In a pan-India coastal cleanup conducted in 2019-22 by NCCR, 40-74% of marine litter was found to be plastic.

As per a 2021 Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) study, the plastic produced in 2019 that becomes marine plastic pollution is estimated to incur a cost of US$3.1 trillion over its lifetime. This expense comes from  the  reduction in ecosystem services from the marine environment like fisheries, tourism and aquaculture. 

A total of 4.8 million women engage in small-scale fisheries globally, accounting for four out of every 10 people involved in the sector, says a study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.  “A significant 55% are engaged in post-harvest processing and trade. Women’s work ensures that the sector not only delivers nutrition but also supports family incomes and local economies,” it says.

Experts cite the need for reduced production of plastics as the first step to reduce litter. There is also a demand for a marine litter policy to manage the litter at the land boundary. “This is because it is impossible to remove the litter once it enters the marine environment,” said Mishra. “Also, 50% of the waste is single-use plastics which must be reduced and renewable alternatives found.” 

“Traditional fishers like us never harvested juveniles like the new ones who are only extracting the sea for profit,” said Tandel. “We would fish only on full-moon nights when the fish came up on the surface. But the newcomers now use LED lights to attract fish. If we are pushed to the wall like this, the Koli community’s dance and music will soon be bereft of its actual foundation, fishing.”

(Reporting by Ravleen Kaur in Geneva, Varsha Singh in Bharuch, Gujarat, and Jisha Elizabeth in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala)

Edited by Radha Rajadhyaksha

Ravleen Kaur is an independent journalist writing on environmental and rural issues.

Varsha Singh is an independent journalist reporting on the environment, climate change and public interest issues.

Jisha Elizabeth is an Indian environment /development/ investigative journalist.