India has an 8118 km length of coastline washed by three seas The Arabian Sea, The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.
There are ten maritime states with 3,827 fishing villages and 1,914 traditional fish landing centers. 79% of fulltime fishers and 72.3% of part time fishers are from the 10 maritime states. A wide range of fishing gears, including trawls, seines, lines, bag nets, stake nets and lift nets are deployed.
The fishing units consist of 208,000 traditional craft, 55,000 traditional motorized craft, 1,250 mechanized boats and about 100 deep-sea fishing vessels.
Small scale fishermen in India operate with traditional skills and knowledge of a high order. It requires a dialogue to understand their limitations and decide which of these can be addressed by training and technology. In other words, a normative approach that prescribes sea safety procedures and use of sea safety equipment is unlikely to succeed. What is needed is an interactive process which gives fishermen information on the options available and allows them to make the best choice.
Secondly, not much work has been done on what sort of equipment is most suited for enhancing safety on small beach landing boats given limitations in space and affordability. Most prescriptions of safety equipment are based on needs of larger vessels. Till recently, products in the market are mostly suitable for larger vessels and out of reach of small fishermen, cost-wise. However, the growing miniaturisation of products and the access to cheaper products from abroad has opened up new possibilities. Over the last few years, SIFFS has tried out a number of sea safety products and developed a
sea safety kit that is affordable and relevant to the small boats in India.
The
kit is still evolving and improving as new technology is introduced and new products hit the market. In a couple of instances, SIFFS has had to get local companies manufacture products to suit the local needs. These include a sea rescue streamer and a night distress lamp. An important insight has been that different items of the
kit are relevant to different groups of fishermen depending on the nature of their fishing (type of gear, distance from shore, skills, etc.). So flexibility in devising the
kit and voluntary adoption of the
kit by the fishermen are key ingredients for a successful sea safety programme.
Based on an analysis of typical
accidents at sea, SIFFS has also developed a set of dos and donts for fishermen which can be imparted through training programmes.
Thus the SIFFS sea safety programme has evolved by researching the needs of the small scale fishermen, researching the technological options available and developing a set of practices and putting together a list of equipment that is suitable and affordable to small scale fishermen. However, both the practices and equipment require frequent review and revision in view of changing needs and availability of new products.
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