M Krishnan & Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan
The Tamil Nadu government banned purse seine fishing in its coastal and territorial waters (up to 12 nautical miles [NM]) through a government order dated March 25, 2000.
The mechanised boat operators and fishing associations were the primary petitioners who contested this order in court. On September 2, 2026, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the existing jurisdictional boundary of 12 NM of the Government of Tamil Nadu and waters beyond 12 to 200 NM in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), to the Central government.
The Apex Court granted conditional relief to the mechanised fishers by allowing purse seine fishing in the EEZ on Mondays and Thursdays between 8 am and 6 pm. These vessels necessarily had to remain live on the Vessel Tracking Systems (VTS) with the state regulatory authorities, Coast Guard and the Indian Navy. However, the court permitted these vessels to transit through a specified designated channel in the state’s territorial waters to access the offshore EEZ waters and ordered the state to streamline this permit process.
The Tamil Nadu Marine Fishing Regulation Act (MFRA), since upheld by the Apex Court, protected the coastal ecology, juvenile fish systems and traditional fishers. Further, pair trawling and purse seine nets were thus banned within the state’s territorial waters. The mechanised vessels bound for the EEZ waters need necessarily display assigned colour-coding and registration numbers, ensure biometric IDs for their crew and keep their registrations alive with the state fisheries department and Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA).
The backdrop of these deep socio-economic tensions between the two factions lies in scale, financial strength and competition. There is a distinct contrast between the potential of Tamil Nadu’s territorial waters (within 12 NM) and its offshore EEZ (12 to 200 NM) fisheries, according to studies by ICAR-CMFRI, Kochi and other fisheries bio-economists. As indicated by catch statistics and surplus production models, the total fish landings in Tamil Nadu (fluctuating around 4.5 to 5.2 lakh tonnes per year) are at or near the threshold of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in territorial waters.
There is an obvious dissipation of resource rent as harvest volumes approach biological limits, since catch per unit effort exceeds the effort required for achieving maximum economic yield (MEY). High operating costs like fuel consumption, over-capitalisation and gear saturation have driven profits to a point where economic rent is almost zero. Data indicates that aggregate biomass appears to be stable, but high-value demersal species and pelagic shoals (sardine, mackerel, shrimp) face high fishing mortality rates due to juvenile fishing in near-shore waters.
On the contrary, deep-sea and oceanic waters beyond 12 NM remain almost unexploited. Stocks of oceanic squids, deep-sea demersals and tunas remain very much under-fished. Higher marginal return at MEY and high economic efficiency are guaranteed if heavy industrial gear (like purse seiners or deep-sea long liners) are shifted to offshore zones without collapse of stocks. Studies have proved that fishing mortality in the EEZ is currently well below sustainable limits.
The MSY-MEY gap needs clear understanding. Near-shore Tamil Nadu waters are operating past maximum economic efficiency, leading to economic stress for small-scale fishers.
Economic sustainability requires targeting MEY at a 10 to 20% lower fishing effort than MSY. The judgment thus effectively drives home this point at effort redistribution by eliminating mechanised fishing pressure in territorial waters, enabling coastal biomass to recover to sustainable levels while directing larger modernised vessels into offshore EEZ where MSY is surplus.
Another dimension of this standoff between the mechanised fishing vessels and the traditional crafts is the volumes landed and economics of marketing. Nagapattinam, Karaikal and Chennai landing centres often get deluged with large purse seine vessels landing massive catches in single auction windows, which trigger localised market gluts driving down wholesale prices and crashing the operating margins of small-scale traditional fishers.
The catch per unit effort (CPUE) of artisanal crafts declines dramatically when high-efficiency net curtains are used by the purse seiners just beyond the territorial waters, just as the coastal pelagic shoals of sardines and mackerel move into near-shore waters.
Collectivisation of local shareholdings among purse seiners operating from major landing centres benefits hugely from these attractive profit-sharing models, which have split the coastal communities into a stand-off, with the traditional fishers crying hoarse for a complete gear ban versus local investors and youth who defend their investments in purse-seine fleets. Skilled deckhands trained over years at sea in traditional crafts are weaned away by the purse-seiners, causing labour shortages and increased operating expenses for the artisanal fishers.
As near-shore catches decline and fuel prices fluctuate, non-institutional financiers and commission agents step in to meet the operational cost requirements of small-scale fishers, driving them into a debt trap and effectively fracturing coastal communities into opposing factions. Future catches are pledged at fixed, sub-market rates in exchange for advances for meeting operational expenses.
(to be continued)
-- Dr M Krishnan is an advisor (Fisheries) (India) at Infinite Sum Modelling LLC, USA, an economic modelling consultancy; Dr Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan is the founder of Infinite Sum Modelling LLC, USA and a fellow at NITI Aayog