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<\/a>A fish vendor at Marina Beach, in Chennai, India, discusses her offerings with Fishploration participants.<\/p><\/div>\n
Many city consumers tend to be familiar with just a few varieties of high-value fish like seerfish and pomfret, Karnad says. This partly has to do with where<\/em> they get their fish from. City consumers are increasingly relying on supermarkets and online stores that predominantly stock popular seafood varieties. Most restaurants, too, have just a few types of fish on their menus. The result is a mismatch between what small-scale fishers can provide and what people frequently seek out, says Karnad. \u201cI feel like at least with the younger generation, they\u2019re totally disconnected.\u201d<\/p>\n This rings true for Yogabhavani Manogaran, who works at Barclays bank. A regular fish eater, Manogaran has long steered clear of fish markets, letting her father do the shopping. But today, she\u2019s eager to get a clearer perspective on what the city\u2019s beachside market has to offer. \u201cBecause I eat fish regularly, I want to know if I\u2019m doing it ethically,\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n Building a connection with seafood and buying more responsibly requires three things, Karnad tells the Fishploration participants: identifying fish correctly; understanding which varieties are in season and okay to eat\u2014that is, choosing non-threatened species that aren\u2019t breeding that month; and recognizing how the fish was caught, to avoid destructive fishing practices.<\/p>\n \u201cYou should be able to go out and identify exactly what fish you\u2019re eating because the greater diversity of fish you eat, the healthier it is for you and for the ocean,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n To help the participants identify fish, Karnad hands out A3-sized posters displaying more than 50 marine species from India\u2019s east coast that are safe to eat in February.<\/p>\n Karnad has compiled this guide for every month of the year and for both of the country\u2019s coasts as part of InSeason Fish, a collective she started with her wildlife biologist husband, Chaitanya Krishna, and friends to create awareness about seafood sustainability. InSeason Fish\u2019s website also lists species that should be avoided each month. To make the lists, the team scoured official government data and scientific studies for details on species\u2019 breeding seasons. For about 10 percent of the species, the team corroborated the scientific information with knowledge from local sellers, who are mostly women. The fisherwomen are the ones who cut the fish and see when the eggs are inside, so they know when the breeding season is, Karnad explains. Where scientific data wasn\u2019t robust enough, such as for threadfin bream and ribbonfish, Karnad\u2019s team relied mainly on the fishing communities\u2019 knowledge.<\/p>\n A participant asks if anchovies will be available today. \u201cEverything will be available,\u201d Karnad says. \u201cThe question is whether you want to eat it throughout the year.\u201d<\/p>\n Divya Karnad hands out posters listing marine species from India\u2019s east coast that can be consumed sustainably in February.<\/p><\/div>\n After the briefing, we split into two smaller groups, led by Karnad and Krishna, and head to the seaward side stalls first, making our way through the swarming crowd. With the help of our guides, we identify big seerfish, pomfret, tuna, prawn, squid, and some sharks, cross-referencing what we see with the poster in our hands. A couple of stalls have piles of rays that Karnad hasn\u2019t included in the lists or on the website. \u201cWe have not put them because they are so difficult to distinguish, so we ourselves get confused,\u201d she says. Many rays are also threatened, she told me the previous evening over a cup of coffee, and we need to encourage eating species that are not.<\/p>\n Nearly every beachside vendor we ask confirms, after some prodding, that much of the seafood on their tables is from Kasimedu, Chennai\u2019s main fishing harbor, about 12 kilometers away. \u201cA truck comes from Kasimedu every day and we buy fish from that,\u201d says Rani, a vendor who goes by a single name, through an interpreter.<\/p>\n Lata Velan, another vendor, who has several dogfish and a milk shark on sale\u2014both on InSeason Fish\u2019s avoid list for February\u2014goes to Kasimedu to buy fish for her stall, she says.<\/p>\n Ironically, some of the fish the women have purchased from Kasimedu may have originated on Marina Beach. Small-scale fishers are increasingly selling their high-value catches like seerfish to traders at harbors such as Kasimedu for export, S. Velvizhi, a marine researcher at M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, who\u2019s not involved with Fishploration, later tells me. At the harbors, fishers are assured a sale at a good price, unlike in the local markets where customers are less reliable. But then, on busier market days, the fishers\u2019 own family members or neighbors might pick up the same fish and bring it back to their stalls. \u201cThey feel like unless they have a seerfish on their table nobody is even going to look at the table,\u201d Karnad says.<\/p>\n Karnad shows Fishploration participants examples of fish purchased from Kasimedu, Chennai\u2019s main fishing harbor.<\/p><\/div>\n Much of the catch at Kasimedu comes from large mechanized boats like trawlers, widely regarded as a destructive form of fishing that involves dragging weighted nets along the seafloor. Some of the largest trawlers can stay out at sea for weeks at a stretch in pursuit of commercially valuable species, which are then kept frozen until sale. As we walk, Karnad points out clues to look for when trying to identify a fish that has been previously frozen\u2014pale gills, rather than red; cloudy eyes instead of clear; and fins that are slightly bent out of shape from being crammed into boxes.<\/p>\n By contrast, the fishing practices of Tamil Nadu\u2019s beach-landing fishers, like those of Marina Beach\u2019s fishers, are more ocean-friendly, and the catch is much fresher, Karnad says. This is because the fishers stay out at sea in small fiberglass boats for just a few hours every night, keeping their nets in water for a short duration, which means that the fish reach the market within hours. This practice aligns with recommendations for reducing by-catch given by international organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. A short soak time, in theory, lets fishers monitor what they\u2019re catching, allowing them to release endangered species and unwanted catch while the animals are still alive. If nets are kept in water for too long, more animals are likely to die and decay in the nets, making them unsalable. Many of the beach-landing fishing villages in Tamil Nadu also voluntarily establish temporary no-catch areas, Karnad says, so they have an area to fall back on when other fishing grounds are depleted.<\/p>\n Vendors fill their baskets with anchovy caught by small-scale fishers operating off Marina Beach.<\/p><\/div>\n Karnad\u2019s team has found through surveys that while Chennai\u2019s small-scale fishers go out to sea hoping to catch more varieties that are of higher economic value, they end up catching a diverse mix of more than 100 different species in a month. These include some highly valued fish, as well as several less-valued varieties like lizardfish or silverbelly that mostly get sold within villages for local consumption or are dried and sold as fish meal for the poultry industry.<\/p>\n We see an indication of this lack of enthusiasm for so-called low-value fish on the other side of the road where the market continues. Sandwiched between parked scooters and cars, some vendors have spread tarpaulins to display small silverbelly, parrotfish, threadfin bream, sole, anchovy, crab, and conch\u2014all caught during last night\u2019s fishing trip in this part of the sea. Few customers cross to this part of the market, sticking instead to the bigger beachside stalls, which predominantly have Kasimedu fish for sale.<\/p>\n When Karnad has encouraged fishers to sell the mix of fish they can catch during each season and not go after high-value fish alone, they\u2019ve been understandably reluctant. \u201cThey said that you have to give us guarantee that people are actually going to buy from us,\u201d Karnad says. Those conversations sparked the realization that to support sustainable fishing, she would also need to promote lesser-known species to the public.<\/p>\n Locals fish with a seine along Marina Beach.<\/p><\/div>\n The diversity of fish at the market is already a revelation for Manogaran. \u201cI thought there were only four to five varieties of fish, but now what I was able to witness here was that there are more than 40 to 50,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n For Sathya Priya Ganeshkumar, a university student and a vegetarian, it is the ability to observe the dynamics of fishing as a livelihood up close that\u2019s drawn her to the walk. \u201cThis is my first time in a fish market,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m interested in labor [issues] generally, so I was fascinated by all this.\u201d<\/p>\n Her interests align with one of Karnad\u2019s secondary goals: she not only wants to introduce people to the diversity of non-threatened, seasonal fish caught by more sustainable small-scale fishers, but also to get participants to interact with the fishing community. \u201cThere\u2019s a deeper connection when you actually meet the fishermen,\u201d says Karnad. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve heard from participants is that the next time they\u2019re faced with the decision of what fish to eat, they remember the people they met.\u201d<\/p>\n After our walk, some of us head to the fishing hamlet of Semmancheri on Kovalam Beach, a 45-minute drive from Marina Beach, for a scrumptious homemade lunch of rice with masala squid, tamarind-based halfbeak curry, and fried halfbeak. The seafood was freshly caught that morning by R. Ramadoss, a 40-something small-scale fisher, and cooked by his wife, Thangam. The squid is safe to eat in February, according to the InSeason Fish poster. The halfbeak, whose breeding seasons Karnad has yet to confirm, isn\u2019t listed.<\/p>\n As we eat, Ramadoss tells us how he started fishing with his father as an 11-year-old. He tells us about the fish he supplies to local hotels and restaurants; the metal cabinet he found in a shipwreck 10 years ago that adorns his living room; and his four children, who after having eaten fish throughout the week, crave chicken biryani on Sundays.<\/p>\n
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