The Fate Of Your Fish

In a bid to combat the effects of over-fishing, non-profit organisation 'Know Your Fish' has created a calendar that helps indicate the best times to eat various species of fish.

- Frazella De Araujo

It is difficult for Goans to imagine their daily meal without fish. But what if you knew that due to the current rate of relentless, indiscrimate fishing practices, your favourite fish might soon disappear from the oceans?

Like all creatures, fish have breeding seasons, but over-fishing practices are pushing these aquatic creatures towards extinction. Trawling, sadly a large scale industry in India, is one of the most destructive fishing practices. Large nets drag across the ocean floor catching everything in its wake and damaging critical marine habitats where fish breed. As much as 40 per cent of what is caught in trawler nets are ‘bycatch’, discarded dead or dying back into the sea.

Aquaculture is a very little known but ubiquitous prawn farming technique in India done for the last two to three decades or more. There is no evidence whether it has reduced the pressure on wild prawns or even demand for wild prawns. In fact, bycatch of wild prawns are used as feed for farmed prawns. So in a way, aquaculture is incentivising and subsidising the highly destructive prawn fisheries.

A deep concern for this issue led three friends to try educating consumers about the issue of over-fishing particularly during the breeding season of each species. Pooja Rathod, Mayuresh Gangal and Chetana Purushottam started Know Your Fish, a website that indicates which species are in the danger zone, when their breeding seasons are, and when it is a good and not-so-good-time to hunt and eat them. Rathod explained, “The idea of starting ‘Know Your Fish’ came from a single conversation with conservationist Dr Nandini Velho in 2014 in which we mentioned that it would be good if hotels adapted a fish-friendly or ocean-friendly menu.”