This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
"There were young people with degrees taking to purse seines because of the pay," Karthi P said. "It was easy work."
He was one of those. Having completed a diploma in mechanical engineering, Karthi, now 28 years old, got involved in purse-seine fishing in Nagapattinam, a seaside town on the Coromandel Coast of Tamil Nadu. Eventually, he also became a partner in Aayiram Kaliamman – a purse-seine fleet named after a local deity. But that was all before 2020, when purse-seine fishing was banned in the southern Indian state, leaving Karthi and many others like him fighting for their livelihoods.
Purse-seine nets – which can run one or two kilometres long and hang a few hundred metres deep underwater, with floats at the top and weights attached to the bottom – are used in the open ocean to catch schooling fish such as sardines and mackerel. Fish shoals are encircled with the net, like a curtain, before the bottom of it is quickly pulled together, creating a "purse" that prevents the fish from escaping. The method often sees several vessels working together – a typical fleet consists of a mechanised "queen" boat, sometimes equipped with nets of varying mesh sizes, and six to ten non-mechanised boats that help lay the net, herd and encircle shoals, and bring in the netted catch.