Category: Science of the Seas

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Daybreak on June 17, 2023 was spectacular. The northeastern horizon was on fire. Every morning, Palayam anna sends me photographs and short videos of the seas and skies taken from the Urur Kuppam beach. If there is anything special, I would receive a recorded audio note as well. Since I’m out of the country, my morning walk-and-talk sessions have been reduced to this ersatz tutoring. June 17 was special. I received a voice note at around 2:30 pm Chennai time. Palayam goes out to the seaside three times a day – at dawn, at around noon and at 10 pm – to observe wind and current conditions that I then enter in a database that we have been maintaining since September 2018 (minus a part of the COVID-19 lockdown).

For those who understand Tamil, I have shared the link so you can hear the real thing. Please ignore the initial section where he chides me for being unresponsive, wondering if I’m busy. “I don’t know if you have a lot of work” ought to be read as “Too busy to respond, eh?”

A translation follows for those who cannot understand Tamil, or may have difficulty with vadakathu kadalmozhi, the name we have given for the fisher Tamil spoken in the Chennai coast. I will intersperse the translation with short notes within square brackets to explain terms peculiar to fisher ways of knowing and tacit meanings.

“Greetings brother! In the morning, early morning when I go [to the seaside]. . .you saw the photos I sent? I don’t know if you have a lot of work… Every morning when I go out [to the seaside], every time when sunrise reddens the skies, it is understood that some natural changes are in the offing. Every day is different and there are changes. That is why our ‘Science of the Seas’ project deserves such intent attention.”

“We are now still in Kachaan naal [a season that roughly corresponds with the southwest monsoon], not Vaadai naal [season that roughly corresponds with the northeast monsoon]. This morning I immediately sensed something. Towards the northeast, the skies above the low-hanging clouds on the horizon were a resplendent red. “What’s this?” I wondered. It looked like the sun had shifted northwards. How can that be? We are deep in Kachaan days, and the Vaikasi vaangal* has barely faded, and the month of Aani is just two days old.” [*Vaangal refers to powerful localised eddies and whirlpools that are generated by strong southerly currents. The Tamil month of Vaikasi (mid-May to mid-June) is known for these deadly vaangals that have been known to trap even powerful swimmers among the fishers. Fishers are wary of these eddies.]

“The thendi [southerly] and olini [easterly] currents have pushed the edaapu* close to the shore. Everything is as it should be in Kachaan days. If one looks at data from the last few years, we can see that pre-dawn reddening and sunrise should be from ner eeran [due east]. That would be the truthful way. Then what does it mean when red skies [dawn indicators] are lighting up the north in this uncharacteristic manner?” [*Edaapu is a shifting line in the sea that marks the separation of turbid nearshore waters from clearer midsea or deepsea waters. Depending on whether a landward-moving easterly (known as olini) is in force or a seaward-moving westerly (memeri), the edaapu will be pushed closer to land or deeper into sea respectively.]

“Is this Vaadai naal (northeast monsoon season) that the sun is rising from the northeast? Why is the vaadai eeran (north eastern) sky reddening to signal daybreak? It is only as the sun clears the horizon that the red begins to bleed out as the day brightens. This morning, sevvanam [red skies] was unusually bright. You may have seen the photos. What is the reason? What changes do these signify. When we observe this, why do we write ‘winds can change; currents can shift and it may rain’.”

In many of our conversations, anna has reminded me of the saying “kaalai sevvanam kaatrukku; maalai sevvanam mazhaikku”, meaning red skies at dawn signal winds, and the same at dusk signal rains. Today’s sevvanam brought in the winds needed to disturb the oppressive heat. Palayam explains:

“First, the hot land breeze clashes with the sea breeze when the latter sets in. Second, the clouds brought in by the northerlies collide with clouds from the south, moist breezes then bring rain. This is what is happening.”

“At 1 pm, [I observed that] the winds had shifted. A vaadai eeran [northeasterly wind] has set in. How can it not when the [northeastern] skies were painted bright red at dawn? The wind has shifted despite the prevailing thendi themma olinisal* conditions. But this breeze is not here to stay. It will shift. By evening, if it rains, the rains will quell the northerlies, and the wind will swing back to blow from kachaan eeran [the southeast].” [*thendi themma olinisal refers to the combined influence of two currents – the south-to-north thendi current, and the east-to-west olini. Southerlies are the prevailing currents and winds during the southwest monsoon season, and currents influence winds and vice-versa. For the breeze to shift to blow from the north, despite the prevailing southerly is significant.]

“This is the reason behind the unbearable odukkam [a condition of stillness absent of any breeze] of the last few days. Yesterday (June 16) was oppressively hot compared even to other days. The days were doubly oppressive because the northeasterly sea breeze was weak [and couldn’t set in]. But today, that has changed, and the heat is doubly reduced. This morning (June 17), I noted that the heat will reduce as the day progresses with chances of rain either later on or at night.”

At 10 pm, Palayam anna sent me another voice message.

“Greetings brother. As already mentioned, at 1 pm today, the vaadai eeran [northeasterly winds] set in, right? These are not Vaadai days, but Kachaan season. Northerlies will be transient and not stable, and unlikely to last after sunset. That’s why the winds shifted to kachaan eeran (southeast) after sunset. Then from 7:14 pm, it started drizzling, and it was leaking rain from then to 9:10 pm. But the rains were too weak [to wet the ground]. The past few days have been very hot. The land has been radiating heat. Raindrops sizzle out on contact with the ground. The wetness of the rains is overwhelmed by the parched heat of the land. Now, the rains have stopped. I wanted to share this with you to note the momentous changes that can be signalled by a sevvanam (red skies).”

It is June 19, as I conclude this essay. It has been raining incessantly since midnight. Such heavy downpours in June are rare. Rare enough for the much-loved weather blogger Tamilnadu Weatherman @praddy06 to tweet: “This is today 150+ mm event in June. Rare indeed, very very rare indeed in June.”

The rains were brought in by clouds moving in from the sea, from the northeast that was afire at dawn on June 17. An event that many enjoyed, but only the wise ones like Palayam saw as a sign of things to come.

Note: For an introduction to local seasons as fishers see it, you can read the story here.

Friday, November 11, 2022

The skies were dark, looming and ominous with pregnant rain clouds. I did not join Palayam for the beach walk this morning. But Palayam is not one to miss even a day’s observation. Since September 2018, he has been taking daily early morning observations of wind, current and sea conditions at Urur Kuppam. I transcribe his “data” onto a spreadsheet. Since October 2022, we have added two more observations for wind – at noon and 10 pm.

It was 6 am when Palayam sent me a detailed voice note expressing doubt over the Red Alert warning of heavy rains in Chennai on 10 November. Fishers rely on palpable signs from the sea, seashore and winds to read storms. All signs certainly indicated that stormy weather is in the offing. The intertidal seafloor was not firm, but squelchy beneath the feet. Thangamani’s net had brought in nearly Rs 5,000’s worth of otta kavalai (sardinella), a sure indicator that a kadaveri (sea storm with zero fishing prospects) was imminent.

But Palayam was skeptical about heavy rains. “We will have rains in spells, but I doubt that they will be anything like the rains of November 2021,” he told me. His voice note records as follows: “The clouds are fearsome and dark, and it looks like it’s going to pour and pour. But there is more wind than rain – the Kun Vaadai storm winds from the north-northwest. Last night, very chill moisture-laden winds blew in from the north and northeast. Our elders used to refer to such winds as ootha kaathu. “Look, the icy cold ootha kaathu is coming,” they’d say.”

“Icy cold” is a bit of a stretch, but understandable if one accounts for the fact that Palayam is from Chennai, where sweaters and chinese ear-muffs are brought out when temperatures plummet to the low 20s (degrees celsius).

Fisher science is starkly different from institutional science when it comes to reading weather systems. Currents are the kingmakers that can block, allow or intensify rain. The stronger the northerly Vanni current is both nearshore and at midsea, the more intense the rain event is likely, provided the other two necessary conditions are satisfied – i.e. northerly Vaadai winds, if not the Kun Vaadai (NNW) which signals a storm, and the presence of rain clouds. When a strong Vanni and Kun Vaadai meet on a cloudy day, you should beware: the heavens will pour.

When Palayam voiced his opinion on the unlikelihood of heavy rains, Kun Vaadai winds were gusting and the sky was dark with rain clouds. But the nearshore and midsea currents were weak. Nearshore currents are easy to gauge: Fling a piece of wood into the waves and see if it drifts south or north. Midsea currents can be sensed by watching how the ships near the harbour drag on their anchors. If their bow-stern points north-south, the current is a northerly Vanni.

But when Palayam entered his data in the early hours of 10 November, visibility over sea was poor. The ships were shrouded by a thick mist. Then, how did he sense the nature of the current out at sea? Palayam explains in his voice note: “The sea is very turbulent. The waves are froth-tipped and have a spring to them. A strong current would have automatically calmed the seas. The turbulence tells me there is no current. Looking at the waves washing in, I see that each wave that forms out at sea washes all the way up the shore, with hardly a gap between one wave and the next. When this happens, we say “Kadal virichalaa irukku. The sea is in a virichal state.””

It is impossible to take a boat out in such conditions – the sea is in a churn all the way from the kadaladi (foreshore) and naduthambu (end of surf zone) to the mela kadaladi (aft shore).”

Friday. 12 November, 2022.

The Indian Express reports that the city received 64.5 mm rain in the 24 hours ending 8:30 am today. As Palayam had predicted, the day was wet but the rains were neither intense (more rain in less time) nor heavy in absolute terms. Contrast that with the 200 mm of rain that fell in just five hours on November 8, 2021 – an hourly average of 40 mm.

Such intense rain events can overwhelm drains and inundate neighbourhoods.

This morning, Palayam sent another voice note at around 5.45 a.m. from his observation perch near Broken Bridge. A strong Eeran wind was blowing in from the east. “I suppose you witnessed the happenings early in the morning. That thunder was like I have never heard before. And the wind was strong too. Whenever thunder and winds combine like this, they will extinguish the rains after a few hours of downpour,” Palayam recorded in the voice note.

I called him in response to his voice note to get some clarifications. He said: “The wind is tending to blow as a Kachan Eeran (from southeast), as a thennal – a calming breeze that will ease the turbulence in the sea, and usher in good fishing in the days to come. That will happen if the low pressure moves north along Tamil Nadu’s coast. If on the other hand, the low pressure turns towards Arabian Sea without coming along our coast, we will continue to witness northerlies, and the sea will remain turbulent.”

The Met department has announced that the low pressure will move along our coast in a northwesterly direction, make landfall and continue over land to cross Kerala and emerge as a low pressure over the Arabian sea.

It is now 12 noon. A few hours back Palayam noted that the winds and the sea had calmed considerably, and that a thennal was imminent. I called up Palayam to find out if the winds had shifted. He refused to indulge me. “Take your cycle and go to the seashore and tell me what you see. Will you believe anything I tell you?” he chided me. I said I had to finish and send this essay. “All the more reason for you to witness what you are about to write,” he insisted.

I went to the beach. The winds were still blowing from the east, but tending to shift to the northeast. There was no sign of a thennal. By the time I returned home, Palayam was calling me from the beach. “What did you see?” he asked. I reported back. “Strange. Just two hours back, the winds made it seem as though they would blow from the southeast (thennal). But now, the sea is back to being rough and the wind is tending to a Vaadai Eeran (northeasterly). The Vanni current has stopped flowing out at midsea. The ships at anchor are pointed east indicating that the bottom current is dead, with only an easterly Olini current flowing.”

It is easy to tell when the Olini pushes landward. The sea will have bands of colour – muddy closer to shore and the blue of the deep further offshore.

I told him about the Met department’s observations. “There is still a chance that a thennal may set in by nightfall. Let’s wait and see.”

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Palayam’s voice note recorded at 5.07 a.m. from Broken Bridge reports that the thennal had set in, albeit only tentatively. The wind was gentle and from the southeast – the breeze that soothes the sea. “All boats can set off today if they so desire. It will rain intermittently because the current is Vanni. But the sea is okay. It is unfortunate for us that the storm did not make landfall in Chennai. Fishing will be okay, but not as remunerative.

Further south, where the storm crossed our coast, there will be happy fishing. Here, the Paruvu is likely to form further out at sea, not nearshore because the storm was not intense here. Where the storm crossed the coast, Paruvu is likely even closer to shore.”

By 7 am, though, the wind had shifted once again to blow again as a Kun Vaadai storm wind, with a burst of rain and thunder. The winds will keep shifting today, he said.

Note: Paruvu is a marine phenomenon that accompanies turbid sea conditions that results in the congregation and gregarious movement of several commercially valuable fish. The opposite of Paruvu is Marappu, which occurs when the seas are clear and emptied of commercially valuable fish.

After a long season of empty nets, the month of Aadi arrived amidst much hope and desperate need.  But Aadi was a betrayal too. When the monsoon over the western ghats is healthy, and the Cauvery and the Kollidam (Coleroon) rivers run bankful to discharge their nutrient-laden waters into the Bay of Bengal, they give birth to an annual marine phenomenon called vanda thanni (turbid water). Pushed by powerful thendi (southerly) and ice-cold olini (easterly) currents, nutrient-laden vanda thanni waters flow north along the shore like a turbid river boiling with all kinds of fish small and large. This is a fish bonanza, a lottery where fishers sometimes make half a year’s earnings in just a day’s fishing. But this year too, the vanda thanni was a no-show.

“Before the tsunami, the sea behaved with a predictable rhythm. Now, nothing is as it should be,” Palayam says, echoing a popular lament that can be heard along the length of the Coromandel coast. “The vaadai naal (northeast monsoon) retreats late; instead of ending with the month of Thai (mid-Jan to mid-Feb), the currents don’t reverse until well into Maasi (mid-Feb to mid-March). The summer days of kodai spill into the stormy vaadai season (northeast monsoon) without a break. Vanni northerly currents ought to set in by Purattasi (mid-September to mid-October) bringing with them a month of clear, calm seas and plenty of fish.” But Palayam predicts that like last few years, this year too we will have rough seas in Purattasi.

Fatigued by the depressing stories of empty nets and whimsical seas, I asked if he had any stories of good fishing in Aadi-Aavani. It took all of two long strides for him to sift through his considerable database of stories to come up with one. This was a story about an exceptional fishing day, but my interruptions and need for clarifications made it as much a story about winds and navigation.

On that day in the month of Aadi, Palayam and his brother purchased about 150 mathi-meen (sardines) from a local fisher. “We must have left at around 7:30 or 8 am,” he recalls. That’s when the first boats return from the vidinchakal paadu (dawn fishing). If these boats return with empty nets, it is bad news for hook-and-line fishermen. It is fish from these boats that are used as bait for our hooks. No fish in the nets of the valaikarars (net fishermen) means no bait for the marathukarars (hook-and-line fishers).”

Like Palayam, his elder brother Viswanathan too is an accomplished fisherman. “We had good teachers. My father was a skilled fisherman who worshipped his work. Then we had Murungakkai who was known for his presence of mind and intuition.

“Fishing had been slow for the valaikarars (net fishers) those last few days. We caught the kachan kodai (southwest) breeze and automatically set a thenmela (southeasterly) bearing. (then refers to south; mela refers to the direction of the deep sea (east).)”

I was confused. With a southwest breeze, won’t the “automatic” course that a sailboat takes be on a northeasterly bearing? Over time, I had learnt that Palayam anna uses English words very confidently, but very loosely. Sometimes, the words just don’t mean what he intends it to mean. I was to find out that this was one such instance.

I cross-checked with Navaz, a good friend and a passionate sailor from the Madras Yacht Club, about the “automatic” direction with a southwest breeze. Navaz patiently explained the basics. “When you sail with the wind behind you, that is called a “run.” When you sail into the wind, it’s called a “beat”. When you have the wind coming at you from the side, that’s called a “reach.” So heading southeast when the wind is blowing from the southwest is a “reach”. That takes some doing.

He didn’t understand why I was making such a big deal about the word automatic. In Palayam’s lexicon, automatic is what your muscle does to respond to a situation. For fishers like Palayam, navigation is not about thinking but about letting one’s muscle memory instruct the working muscle.

Palayam gets easily frustrated with me. “Come on a boat with me, and I will show you. You can learn in one boat trip what will take you ten days to learn if I were to explain to you drawing lines on the sand.” But believe it or not, for all that I may say about his lack of patience with my ignorance, it is a fact that he is easy with me. If I had been a fisherman by birth, and with this level of incompetence, he would have been unforgiving. Today, before he started on the story about his exceptional fishing event, he was cussing out Sunnambu (name changed). Sunnambu was a young pattinavar man from Pulicat who had not heard about a variety of prawn called nattu iral. Pattinavar refers to the caste of the community of sea-fishers from north Tamil Nadu.

“He calls himself a fisherman!” Palayam spat in disgust. “He says he’s gone to sea with his father. But he doesn’t know what a nattu iral is. I have lost all respect for him. He should be ashamed to say he’s a graduate. What use is his law degree if he doesn’t know the names of the fish in his sea?”

Palayam was trying to take me on a boat ride to explain what I thought was my simple question about the direction he took and the prevalent winds. But I insisted on an immediate clarification, and he yielded.

“You are right that if I set sail with the wind behind me, I would be headed in a vadamel (northeast) direction. But if I did that I would have difficulty returning home. Remember these are kodai naal (summer days). The sea breeze won’t be brisk and will blow from the southeast in the afternoon. If I want to head home with least effort after a day’s work, I should be positioned to run with the wind behind me. When I leave, I’m already thinking and planning for my return. So we decided to head towards the southeast. The paar (reef) that we were seeking is at around 16 fathom east of Injambakkam. By when it is time to return, we are likely to have a slow breeze blowing from the southeast. Now, I can run with the wind behind me as planned; I will be able to comfortably reach the Urur Kuppam beach.”

Nothing that the fisherman did was without intent.

“We made good time. Once we crossed the nearshore waters, we entered a zone with turbid waters as we headed out deeper and deeper past 16 fathoms.”

The sea speaks to fishers through its colours and texture as much as it does through currents and how the wavelets appear and dissipate.

“That day, the sea was the colour of coffee at the surface and a churning of mud below. Imagine what you’d look like if you were to emerge from a gutter; the sea had the colour and consistency of that slush.

Suddenly, I spotted a maavulasi (narrow-barred seer fish) flapping its tail. Maavulasi do that when they are feeding. Sometimes they jump out of the water. It is easier to spot them when they do that. But that day, it was just a flap at the surface. I called out to my brother and loosened the sail to let it flap, and shoved the thadapalagai (keel) down to stabilise the kattumaram. Both of us quickly grabbed a hook, threaded a piece of fresh sardine, added a lead ball for weight. I was at the kadaa end (back or stern of the boat) and my brother was at the thala (head, bow or front-end of the boat).

Barely had I cast my line, and a 3 kg maavalasi grabbed the bait. I hauled it in excitedly. By the time I landed the fish thrashing on my maram my brother had snagged one and was hauling it in. He cast his line on the side of the sail (leeward), and I cast from the windward side so that both of us could fish simultaneously. We were atop an entire maappu (shoal) of maavulasi. We let the boat drift. All we cared was to stay with the shoal. After that it was a tiring but fulfilling stint of threading bait, dropping the hook, reeling it in, unhooking the fish. . .and repeat. In no time, we had 60 fair-sized maavulasi on our boat. We sold it for Rs. 20,000 – a fair sum in those days.”

Predictably, seeing us return with so much fish caused a lot of excitement in our village. Next day, all the marathukaarars (hook-and-line fishers) left for the same fishing grounds. But the sea was not in the mood. The fishers were in for a kadaveri – the seas had changed overnight from being bountiful to being tightfisted. That day, it poured like it never had before. Between the winds and the pouring rain, every single boat returned empty.

The morning air is still, though not yet uncomfortably warm. It is early April. We decided not to walk today; we’ll cycle instead. If we ride fast enough, we can fool ourselves into believing there was a brisk breeze blowing into our faces. This dawn-time stillness has a name in fisher tamil – Odukkam. The first time Palayam anna said “Odukkama irukku,” I asked him what it meant and whether I should include it in the work-in-progress glossary of fisher tamil words that we were compiling. “Definitely! Add this. When the breeze suddenly drops to a still, we call it Odukkam,” he offered.

Chithirai (mid-April) is the beginning of Chennai’s infamously hot season. It is April 6 – and the last week of the Tamil month of Panguni. We are still enjoying pleasant mornings and evenings. Palayam is not happy. “The scorching kodai breeze from the west is late in the coming. The winds won’t shift until a thunderstorm forms, quenches the earth and swings the breeze to a steady and forceful westerly.” That will be good for fishing. Scared by the tremors caused by the thunderstorm, fish flee the deep waters towards the shore.

For many years on end, summer storms have given Chennai a miss. “Before tsunami, not a year passed without a storm either in Chithirai or Vaikaasi (May-June). But now everything is topsy turvy,” Palayam says, repeating a lament that can be heard across Tamil Nadu’s coast. Chithirai is notorious for its night-time summer storms, just as Vaikaasi is for its day storms. The tsunami appears to be a major threshold between the predictable seas of yesteryears and the unpredictable oceanic phenomena that some attribute to climate change.

Last night, Barathi brought back a decent catch of muliyan, kanan keluthi and vari paarai. “Should fetch him at least Rs. 2000. I had gone to pick up some fish for our kitchen.” The mid-sea current has broken to a light vanni. In fisher speak, “odanchirukku” which is tamil for “has broken” refers to when a current slows down and reverses directions, even if temporarily. This season is characterised by southerly thendi currents both nearshore and in mid-sea. These will remain in force until the southwest monsoon fades, and are replaced by the northerly vanni current with the onset of the northeast monsoon. “Barathi told me that last night, the sea was white with vavval (pomfret) swimming around,” Palayam said.

The young fisherman was keen to return the next night with a specialised vavval valai (float net) to catch the pomfret. But, Palayam warned him. “Don’t go out at night brother. Wait till the Chithirai storm has come and gone. There’s no telling when a storm can build up. There’ll be good fishing after that with all the fish coming ashore and jumping into your net,” he said.

The sea breeze is still making mischief. Throughout the night, the breeze blows gustily from the south – a nedun kachaan from the cardinal south. Around 5:45 am, just as daylight breaks and before the sun peeps over the horizon, the brisk breeze drops to a standstill (odukkam). And then, as we end our morning walk and return from the river mouth, there’s just a meek hint of a breeze from the southwest (a kachan kodai). Such a weak breeze can’t keep the sea breeze out. By 10 am, thankfully for the residents of Chennai, a gentle, cool kachan eeran sea breeze sets in that intensifies as the day progresses.

The odukkam marks a threshold when the sea and land are at a tentative equilibrium. Breezes are a result of differentials in temperature and pressure and Earth’s movement.

The sea heats and cools slowly; it is the opposite with land. After months of cool weather, the sea is still much cooler than the land. As the sun rises, the fast-heating land warms the air column above it. Hot air rises, and the cool sea breeze rushes in to fill up the low pressure. With every passing day of blazing sun, the sea is taking in the heat and retaining it. The day is not far when the night-time sea will be warmer than the fast-cooled land at night. When this happens, the night breeze will blow from the west and the dog days of a full-fledged kodai summer will be in evidence. Incidentally, kodai which means westerlies in fisher tamil also means summer in colloquial Tamil.

Rains even far out west will quench the land, cool it, and trigger an eastward breeze.

“Give it a few more days. If not here, there will be thunderstorms further west,” Palayam says hopefully. “The hot days will be upon us. Let’s hope for a storm here so that the misery of heat is offset by good fishing.”

§

A glossary of terms

• Odukkam: When a brisk wind drops to a still
• Odanchirukku: When an ocean current slows, stops and reverses direction
• Chithirai: Tamil month falling between mid-April and mid-May
• Vaikaasi: Tamil month falling between mid-May and mid-June
• Kachan: Southerly breeze
• Thendi: Southerly sea current
• Vanni: Northerly sea current
• Kodai: Summer, also means westerly breeze
• Kachan kodai: Breeze from the southwest
• Nedun Kachan: Breeze from the cardinal south
• Kachan eeran: Southeasterly breeze, breeze from the southeast (sea breeze)
• Muliyan: Tamil name for big-eyed mackerel
• Kanankeluthi: Tamil name for mackerel
• Vari Paarai: Tamil name for blue trevally

Photo: Nityanand Jayaraman

The sea has been calm, flat as a sheet of glass. That’s as it should be at this time of the year. The storm that never came last week roughed up the seas and robbed the locals of more than a week’s fishing. As I walk down the road towards the beach, I can hear the ocean – like a cloth tearing followed by an explosive slap as the wave hits the beach. Too loud a noise for a wave that is little more than a low frothing curler. I remember Palayam explaining to me that “The sea is more noisy when it is calm. When the sea is in a roil, you can’t hear the waves slap the shore.”

Calm seas with a light shore current are just right for the shore seine – a hand-hauled communal net deployed from the beach. The shore-seine has evolved over time, and differently across the world. What used to be the Peria Valai – a hefty cotton- and coconut-fibre net – that needed more than 50 able-bodied men to haul it is now the modaa valai, a lighter, easily deployable plastic beach seine that requires only 30 people’s effort. Urur Kuppam has four modaa valai nets.

A shore seine. Illustration: Gunawardena N.D.P., Jutagate T/, Amarasinghe U.S. 2016. Patterns of species composition of beach seine fisheries off North-Western coast of Sri Lanka, fishers’ perspectives and implications for co-management. Marine Policy 72:131-138.

These days, our morning walks are magical with skies taken straight out of a Lord of the Rings movie. The pre-dawn horizon is dark and topped by a resplendent rosy pink sky as ceiling. The shades change magically as the orange orb of a sun rises. But not everything has been rosy. Over the last week, two sets of fishers have used the shore seine four times each. Shore-seines are a lot of effort and expense. Even if the nets return empty, 30 people will have to be paid at least a hundred each. And then there is the diesel expense for the wasted trip made by the boat.

For three days, the modaa valai has been returned with only bad news. Empty nets are disappointing, but at least they are easier to haul in, dismantle and spread out to dry. A few days ago, the nets came back heavy with senjori – a non-edible jelly fish with a nasty sting. “Thank god it was not muttai sori,” Palayam exclaimed. “Senjori makes you itch like crazy, but it’s not life-threatening. Odambukku kulirchi (It’s actually cooling to the body!).”  Fishers treat senjori stings by lathering the sting spots with castor oil. The Muttai sori (a different variety of jellyfish), on the other hand, is a menace. “Its venom heats up the body to a point where your immune system weakens and you can even be laid up with manja kamaalai (jaundice),” he said.

Faced with day after day of empty nets and nets full of angry jelly fish, lesser people would have given up. But fisher ethos is grounded not in the valour of trying and trying again until you succeed, but in knowing that “If not today, then tomorrow, the sea will give.”

The sooner a strong thendi current from the south takes over, the better it is, Palayam says. With the thendi comes the olni current that pushes the cool, clear waters from the deep sea to shore, bringing with it all kinds of fish.

Today, the currents had aligned it seems. Three of the four modaa valai in the village were cast this morning. Before it is cast, the net has to be assembled … every time. The hauling rope (kayiru or kavuru) is tied to the maattil, a broad-meshed section holding together the head rope running along the top of the net (floating) and the foot or ground rope along the bottom with weights. The wings comprise two sections – the first, pentha paavu, has a webbing with large mesh size to guide the large fish to the trap and let the small ones escape; the second, adantha paavu, has a smaller mesh and is connected to the cod end of the net, a fine-meshed drawstring purse called madi.

Once assembled, the net is loaded onto a boat leaving one end of the kayiru in the hands of haulers. Experienced fishers can spot a shoal from ashore. “We look for the maappu, which may look like a shadow or a moving patch or red along the sea surface. It is said that the southerlies redden the eyes of the anchovy lending a reddish tint to the sea surface as the shoal moves.” The boat heads east setting the net through the shoals, passing the shoals, turning around to encircle it and returning to the beach some half a kilometre from where they launched to hand the hauling rope attached to the other end of the net to the fishers waiting on the beach.

Of the three nets cast today, two raked it in. One net hauled in Rs 90,000 worth of fish, mostly large-sized nethili (anchovies), naama paarai (trevally) and kanankeluthi (mackerel). These fish graze together and are found in each other’s shoals. The fisher name for such mixed fish shoals is paruvu. Today, 60 families will rejoice. One-third of the catch to the owner of the net, and two-thirds distributed among the 30 fishers who hauled the net. The second net brought in Rs. 45,000 worth of fish.

The third net didn’t bring in much. By the time it was cast, the sun was already high and the thendi current had picked up speed. “The fish dive down if the current is this strong. If the breeze and current are this brisk, the lightweight plastic fibre modaa valai drifts far too rapidly to be effective. The coconut-fibre peria valai is heavier and unaffected by strong currents or winds,” Palayam explained. “But that’s gone now. Everything’s been replaced by plastic,” Palayam remarked nostalgically.