Ghost Nets

When a person sits down to a fish curry or a portion of fish and chips, they rarely think of where that fish comes from. We rarely realize that when we consume fish, we are eating the last truly wild caught meat on the planet, our ancient role as hunters reprised in the role of modern day fishermen.

Of course the new age fishermen are a far cry from what they were centuries or even decades ago. With engines, mechanization, longlines that stretch for kilometers with thousands of hooks and nets that could engulf the Empire State Building, the fisheries industry has become almost unrecognizable as has sadly our oceans, rapidly depleted and overfished what we see in our seas now appears to be but a sad remnant of the abundance that was there decades ago.

Our surface interval chats with Uncle Sumathi used to really bring this home, 56 years old, he had seen foreign trawlers come and rape the seas off Colombo, taking so much fish that the numbers have never recovered. Apparently the local fishermen had to gang up and beat up some of the fishermen who came in the trawlers to get rid of them and protect what was left. The discussion about the differences from then and now were frequent and depressing.

We rarely think about the ‘cost’ of the food on our plate except in monetary terms. The reality is that there is a far greater hidden cost to our environment, apart from the incidental catch which kills thousands of marine mammals and birds a year our hunger for fish continues to kill days, weeks, months and even years after the fishermen have moved on. This is done silently, without fan-fare by lost nets, those that escaped the fishermen, taken away by currents or carelessness.

A fish eye view of a derelict net, a net smothering Palagala (shallow reef in Colombo)

We see these nets often on our dives, especially on the inner reefs, carpeting the rock smothering everything in its path. Some are huge and while we try and take off what we can, it is a disheartening process as sea fans and soft corals often crunch away from the rock as we cut the nets. We often find fish entangled, dead or dying and other animals (await a story about a crab rescued from a net) waiting for a slow, inevitable death in the nets.

Dead and beheaded, a fish killed by a ghost net

One of our wrecks, the Medhafaru was literally a tomb for fish being sheathed in nets before some inteprid divers from the Sri Lanka Sub Aqua Club cleared a lot of them from the ship. Research has provided some staggering estimates for kills from these nets, with a  single net in Puget Sound being estimated to have killed over 3,000 seabirds and fish combined. We don’t have any figures from Sri Lanka but it would be safe to assume fish kills are quite high.

Perilously close, fish feed close to a net on the Medhafaru

Divers can of course play a part in removing this menace but with the risk of entanglement it is advisable if only experienced divers working in teams tackle this kind of thing. We can all however try and understand where our seafood comes from and at least appreciate the cost to our natural systems from this harvest.

Cutting a net off the reef (only experienced divers should do this)

There she blows! (Sri Lankan version Part 2)

Continued from here

4.30 dawned dark and bleary, as we hobbled down to congregate at various randomly decided locations before getting together in a loosely knit convoy for the 20 minute drive to Mirissa. Once we in a roundabout manner found Mirissa Water Sports, a stones throw from the harbour; the next step was to provide all our details, ID numbers, address, hair colour, when we last had a shave, etc for the Navy’s benefit. Actually I jest; it was just name and ID number.

Fighting off the rather friendly dogs at the harbour we boarded the two storey boat, the Spirit of Dondra and were issued humongous life-jackets which I quickly discarded (I wouldn’t recommend this to the regular traveler but I have issues with bravado) as we moved out of the harbour. We gathered steam and headed out into the deep blue of the open ocean as Six Pence None the Richer still played in my head and Mirissa gleamed golden and newly minted in the early morning light.




 (L-R): Boarding the boat, Mirissa Sunrise

The boat ride seemed to go on interminably, the boat swaying in the swells. While most of my boatmates slumbered on the top deck to catch up from the early start, I gazed around at the sea in a whole new perspective. Being a frequent diver, I spend a lot of time in small boats almost at eye level with the sea. Here I was around 6m above the sea and the grandiosity of the swells had to be seen to be believed, one could easily imagine the kinetic energy generated by those swells to be immense as the giant sheets of deep blue water rippled slowly across our path. 

On the watch

Flying fish skittered across the surface every now and then, these were bigger than what I had seen as well and they flew for meters. On occasion looking into the glare of the sun, a flying fish skimmed so far across the waves, dipping in once to get more momentum that I thought I must have misidentified some kind of sea dwelling bird.


 
Mirissa Water Sports 

The first whale sighting was relatively understated, mostly because most of us missed both the whale and the excitement amongst the MWS boys who shouted directions down to the boat captain as we turned towards the spout. The whale watchers were finally roused from their respective slumbers and cameras were eagerly pointed towards the whale as it whooshed an exhalation, misting the blue horizon as its bulk moved seamlessly, grey through the water. After a few breaths at the surface, the ludicrously small dorsal fin arched through the water as the immense creature, over 30 meters long, propelled itself into a dive, giant flukes cresting through the water as it sounded. The scale of the whale was brought home to me when I saw the pool of still water amongst the swells of the ocean that the gigantic body had created during its dive.



Blue whale breaching
 
What followed was quite similar to my Californian experience but just nowhere near as cold. The whale dived, fluking as we desperately clicked off as many pictures as possible and then we waited patiently until it surfaced again. The Mirissa and Fisheries Corporation boats’ behavior with the whale was exemplary, quiet engines, staying in the whale’s safe zone and maintaining a minimum 100 meter distance to the whale, except when the whale decided to come closer on one memorable occasion.



L-R: Whale spouting, Mirissa Water Sports and the whale

Unfortunately our experience was hugely marred by some extremely irresponsible (not to mention obviously cheap) tourists who had chartered a local fishing boat to come whale watching. The boat sounded like they had jerry rigged a Tuk Tuk engine and the fishermen had absolutely no respect for the animal, charging up and down and scaring the whale into taking short surface breaks. The irresponsibility of the fishermen is one thing, but the sheer stupidity of the tourists is something that has to be seen to be believed. For the sake of a few thousand rupees theses cheap tourists put the wellbeing of one of the world’s most majestic animals at risk.


Irresponsible Tourists

Rant aside we watched the whale for a couple of hours before heading back to shore. The 20 strong crowd variously napped, chatted, ate innumerable biscuits or stared hypnotized at the sea. After a while it occurred to some of us that we were not in fact heading back to shore, unless we were trying to make landfall somewhere in Africa. Consulting the Mirissa boys, it turned out that a shoal of Spinner Dolphins had been sighted and we were heading to check them out. Having previously missed the Spinners at Kalpitiya, I was quite excited about finally seeing some high spirited shenanigans from these famous acrobats of the sea.

 
Airborne Spinner dolphins

And they didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere on the boat while watching the Spinners was sharply different from when the Blue Whale was surfacing. While the whale with its slow almost languorous movements inspired a more reverent awe at the immensity of its sheer bulk, the Spinners inspired sheer excitement as they zipped breathlessly through the water taking a break once in awhile to do headstands or take flight out of the water. You could almost hear the entire group gasp collectively as they shot past our bow, shimmering silver streaks in the deep blue water, bubbles exploding around them.

 
Swimming past the boat

To be honest with the immensity of the pod and the non-stop action around I didn’t know where to look and eventually put my camera down and simply enjoyed the show. After about an hour we decided to make a move but a large pod started coming at us with a path crossing directly in front of us. The Mirissa boys killed the engine and we waited patiently for the pod to cross our bow. Unfortunately another fishing boat with tourists on board decided the best way to show their (all foreign) customers the dolphins were to drive directly into the pod. Of course this scared the hell out of the poor dolphins and they submerged, not to be seen again. The stupidity of the tourists and the fishermen had to be seen to be believed. People should really know better.

 
Irresponsible tourists Part II

Apart from the slightly sour taste in our mouths from the irresponsible tourists scaring the whales and dolphins, the trip was an unbridled success. Unawatune, despite the badly planned development is still not as bad as Hikkaduwa and the bay has a charm that is simply missing in Hikkaduwa. Bishu’s is a delightful place to stay and the Mirissa Water Sports whale watching excursion though a bit basic to those who are used to the more sophisticated excursions in the developed world is still a step in the right direction. If you do go to Mirissa to see the whales, please be responsible and use Mirissa or the Ceylon Fisheries boat and avoid the cheap fishing boats that are destroying the natural heritage that attracts the tourists in the first place.
 
Whale in the Indian Ocean

There she blows! (Sri Lankan version Part 1)

It was a funny sense of Déjà vu that I felt, as the boat slipped out of the Mirissa fishing harbour as the sun rose on the southern edge of Sri Lanka. I had the Sixpence None the Richer song in my head again, There she goes, in some psychosomatic flashback to my California trip to see Blue Whales. This trip was totally different though, in more ways than geographical. While the California experience had been purely to see the biggest animal that had ever existed the Mirissa/Unawatune trip was a weekend away with sea, sand, food and good company in equal quantities.

The venue for the weekend was Bishu’s (you can call the gentleman at 0777708880 right after reading this post…trust me it's the best budget place to stay in Una), cunningly disguised as the Unawatuna Bay hotel where a group of 20 of us (well mostly 20) crashed down for a weekend of chilling out and…wait…I already mentioned above what conspired for the weekend. But did I mention chilling out?

After a long trafficky dive down to Unawatune and settling down at Bishu’s, we headed for dinner with Kosala at the Submarine Diving School. I hear they’re pretty good at all things diving related, but I’ll be damned if they don’t have a Michelin starred chef working there. The food was relatively simple, grilled fish, devilled crab, salad and potatoes. The fish however was the most delicate and flavourful I had had in months, the salad was absolutely divine, a million flavours hitting your palette at the same time while the crab was…well spectacular to say the least. To say I took my time and demolished everything on my plate is probably the understatement of the year. Add the beautifully lit crescent bay, the white sands, quietly swishing ocean and the starry night and it was an absolutely perfect night and the best way to start what was to be the perfect weekend.

Saturday may have dawned bright and early in sunny southern Sri Lanka, but since I haven’t slept in since around November 2009, I decided to take a chill pill and stay in bed until the rest of the crew turned up to Bishu’s. Of course I didn’t get to sleep too much as some of the others on the trip came in bright and early from Colombo and roused us for lunch. Might I take a moment here and say the lunch at Bishu’s is absolutely brilliant. I had an interesting opportunity to contrast Unawatune Beach Resort’s sandwiches (supplied for breakfast by a friend) to Bishu’s lunch. The former was tasteless and hugely overpriced at Rs.500 for some sandwiches and soggy fries while the latter was the epitome of delicious Lankan style food. So here’s another tip, avoid UBR if you want value for money, there are much better options out there.

In order to digest our lunch fully, we decided in a fit of enthusiasm to hike to the nearby Jungle Beach and relax in the ocean. On our first 2:1 slope on the way, my enthusiasm waned somewhat, being weighed down by a full stomach and dripping with sweat in the humidity. However getting to Jungle Beach, my enthusiasm was (somewhat) restored. The beach is very pretty and picturesque, turquoise blue and green water, but in usual Sri Lankan fashion, people who come to the beach, tourists and fishermen, seem to have an uncontrollable urge to pollute it and there are plastic bags and other unseemly things lying around.

Jungle Beach

Credit: Dhammika Heenpella / Images of Sri Lanka

This drawback was however quite easy to forget while relaxing in the bathtub warm waters of the bay. I tried a small snorkeling expedition with a friends mask but it was too ill-fitting to do much with apart from spot a frightened puffer fish and skim the sand in search for small shells, odd pieces of rock and other things that only I would ever find interesting. Despite almost taking out a couple of people with my headstands and flailing legs to keep me under water, I had quite a lot of fun. The snorkeling does appear quite good here though if you can get further out into the bay as can be seen from one of my friend’s pictures here. Note that he didn’t snorkel, just waded in and stuck his waterproof camera underwater to get these fabulous pictures.

Powder Blue Surgeon Fish

Credit: Dhammika Heenpella / Images of Sri Lanka

It was with regret that we waded out as the sun set and headed back to Bishu’s to dry off, change and head back to the Submarine Diving School for a BBQ they had set up for us. I could wax on about this feast as well, but I’m afraid the culinary enthusiasts amongst my readers (assuming I have any) would hasten to throw themselves out of the nearest window. Suffice to say that I would like to take a moment to thank Kosala, Shirley and the staff of the Submarine Dive School for putting together what was arguably the best BBQ on (and off) the beach I have ever had. 

BBQ in progress

Credit: Dhammika Heenpella / Images of Sri Lanka

Satiated, replete and all the other adjectives you can think of to imply a full stomach, we took our leave off the warm Unawatune night and retired to bed early with the eager prospect (well not for some) of waking up at 4.30 the next morning to see the largest animal that has ever existed in the world.

To be continued