Marine Litter

Crossing the Kerala-Karnataka Border at Kasaragod district, I met a fisherman with a brand new fishing pole proudly showing another fisherman to reel the fish in. Striking a conversation, I asked him to show me how to use it and he did. With the pole in my hand, I was waiting for a bite for a while. He said that the waters had become muddy due to unseasonal rain. When the waters are muddy, there is usually a catch, but this year, the number of fish was low and the numbers had been steadily decreasing in the last couple of years.

This was echoed right through the coastline. The night we stayed at SharadaNagar, at Kasaragod, a number of fishermen had gathered to converse with us. They said “Earlier, we used to find a variety of fish (…when we used to go fishing with our fathers). We don’t see those fish anymore. We tried to look for them at the fish markets in Mangalore, Kasaragod and Udupi, we didn't find those fish.” It was almost a lamentation of the old times. They recollected how they could catch enough fish in half an hour for them and their families in the past and had a little surplus to sell as well. “If we do the same now, we won’t even have enough for a curry,” they shared. “All of this is because of plastic. There is so much plastic in the sea, it breaks our nets. We don’t put our waste in the water because we know that it washes up to us in the end but there are many who throw it into the sea. It affects us at the end of the day,” a fisherman from SharadaNagar informs us.

Moving towards Kasaragod town, I see waves of plastic and pollution washing into the shore. The fisherfolk seem oblivious to this growing menace here. They walk on the plastic, catch plastic with fish, sort it from their catch and throw it back into the ocean. It was an almost surreal scene, tourists walking on plastic, fishermen relaxing amid plastic and animals running around in plastic. A large bull (cow) turns to face me and proceeds to charge towards me, a large bra stuck in its horns waving like a flag announcing his arrival. Here, plastic was a part of the environment. If it was a buffalo, this would have been so symbolic, I thought. Yama coming for humanity on waves of plastic.

Just across the groyne marking the exit from Kasaragod town were clean beaches. I walk towards Mahe, crossing Thalassery. The sea walls were covered in an ocean of rubbish. Cats steal some old unsold fish left to rot while skinny, mangy dogs rummage through the rubbish looking for a bite to eat. The fishing community exists in this space. The city consumes their catch while they are consumed by the city’s rubbish. I could often smell the heavy stench of dead fish and poultry when I walked this path. The thunderous ocean hits the sea wall often and spills over to the road. At Azhiyur Harbour, a little off Mahe, a fisherman tells me that plastic is the reason that the number of fish is low this year. “Why would I buy fish otherwise? You see me buying fish here. Almost all of us who are buying fish here are fishermen. The catch is so low that even we have to buy fish to eat.” He opens a green plastic bag and hands it over to the seller. “When I was much smaller, almost everything was sold in banana leaves, cloth bags or metal containers. I know how bad plastic is. I can’t help it. Even though I speak so much about how bad plastic is, I cannot help but use it. Is there a choice? Let me know if there is an alternative that is as cheap and convenient.”

Towards Kozhikode, we see the rise of another industry alongside fishing. Men and women walk into the waters with narrow nets. They dip them into the waters time and time again, withdraw their nets and bring them to the shore. They discard the catch on the shore and follow the routine once again. I wandered close to the mounds to have a look and to my surprise, they were shells! Hundreds and hundreds of shells dotted with broken plastic. These shells are apparently used in the white cement industry and traditionally used to fertilize coconut groves. The pieces of plastic affect the weight of the catch. These are often worn down parts of various objects. I wonder how much of these are ingested by marine life or by people.

While there have been cleaner segments to walk through, I cannot help but note that those are either barely occupied by people, or have resorts who clean the beach for commercial purposes. 

I walk through Saddam Nagar in Thiruvananthapuram, a cyclone-affected patch of houses with paths so narrow that I’m often walking into the homes of another to go to the other side. Johnson, a young fisherman explains their plight to me. “How can we eat without plastic? Everything comes in plastic. I don’t want to live in an area that looks like this or go out to work in a place like this but I don’t have a choice.

For the last two years, since Cyclone Ockhi (2017), we haven’t had anyone come to remove the plastic.  Look, can you see the kids playing?” He looked to the shore, “They are playing on rubbish. We had no choice but to dig a big hole, drop all our plastic in it and try to cover it with sand. Every time the ocean sweeps the sand away, the plastic spreads itself everywhere. We just dig another hole to try to make it go away.”

Watching the scene in front of me, an analogy by Dr Sharath, whom we met at Vypin comes to mind “Imagine a tap left running. We keep trying to mop up the water constantly. And as quickly as we mod up, someone has to close the tap for the water to stop spilling over. As people, we look at solid waste management as an act of cleaning up. When will we switch the tap off?”