Fishermen find it tough to make ends meet

“HOW many did you catch?” Pak Mat shouts to the fisherman in a small boat to his left. The young man stops scanning the net he has just pulled out of the water, turns to Pak Mat and says, “six only.”

His answer echoes what fishermen in Port Dickson have been telling me lately. It’s getting harder to survive as fishermen.

As recently as a decade ago, fishermen like Pak Mat would only do one fishing trip a day to make a decent living. But now, Pak Mat has to do two fishing trips each day, about six hours in the morning and another six hours in the evening.

His fellow fishermen, the ones with bigger boats, are staying out as long as 18 hours a day at sea.

It is the same story in other parts of the country. Fishermen are travelling further out to sea just to earn a decent living.

There are many reported cases of fishermen from Port Dickson being arrested while fishing in the waters of Indonesia.

Not only is the catch getting less, Pak Mat and his fellow fishermen in Port Dickson are saying the nature of the catch is changing too. As many as half of the species they used to catch 10 years ago are now missing.

Several species, common till recently, have almost entirely vanished. “These were large fish,” Pak Mat said.

Other species are still around but in lower numbers than before. It’s clear that the catch has fallen quite precipitously.

In other words, fishermen are catching fewer high-value, large predator species. Most of their catch now are lower value species further down the food chain.

That is why it does not surprise me anymore that a kilogram of ikan kembung costs RM21, and the picture of a makcik holding an ikan kembung with its price tag has gone viral on the Internet.

LIONEL PERERA Port Dickson