flicker of disappointment crosses the face of 55-year-old Shri Vasudev Nishant (Tandel), captain of fishing boat Shiv Shakti, as he surveyed his catch of the day. It is nine months since Nishant last saw his family. He is stuck in mid-sea, 150 kilometres off the Gujarat coast. The target for the season was to catch fish worth Rs 10 lakh, but till now, his team has managed just above Rs 8 lakh.
Hailing from Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Shiv Shakti’s seven fishermen combat sea sickness, extreme weather conditions and fluctuating fish catch, nine out of 12 months in a year. “Our daily routine moves from waking up early, catching fish, slicing them, pushing them into freezers and going back to sleep,” said Tandel, who has been a fisherman for the last 30 years.
“Sometimes, the dreary conditions force us to start hallucinating about our family back home and how they are managing without us,” says Tandel. “But at least, we manage to give them a better life than ours.”
The small fishing boat belongs to a Koli family – koli refers to those engaged in the fishing trade -- from Madh Island, Malad. The family spends Rs 2 lakh per month. Of this, Tandel gets Rs 30,000 while the remaining fishermen have salaries ranging from Rs 10,000 to 20,000. “Every day, each one of us looks at the others and we curse our poverty-stricken past that forced us into doing this as a full-time profession,” says Gulabchand Mishra, who has been fishing for the past 22 years. Some of the fish that make up Shiv Shakti’s daily catch includes mackerel, prawn, pink perch fish and pomphret.
Seventeen-year-old Sandeep Sonkar completed his senior secondary education from a school in Sultanpur but was forced into fishing because his family needed funds for his sister’s wedding. “I am thankful that I earn almost Rs 15,000 a month but if given a chance I would like to study further, preferably a night school in Mumbai,” he says.
Some of the fish that make up Shiv Shakti’s daily catch includes mackerel, prawn, pink perch fish and pomphret.
“The struggle is to maintain our calm in our tough working conditions. The skin of our hands starts to peel off while pulling the heavy rope that holds the daily catch. The salt water mixed with extreme humidity makes it even more taxing. To add to that is our concern about the safety of our family back at home,” says Chandrabhan Pal, another fisherman on the boat.
(Right bottom) Workers clean the fish for cooking. With no access to vegetables, fishermen have no choice but to eat only fish.
(Left) Almost 5,000 fish are unloaded on to the boat, scales cleaned up and then the fish is readied to be kept under ice till the stock is taken back to the shore.
(Top right) When they are not catching fish, the fishermen crew spend time playing cards, sharing stories about their life back home or watch films together on their mobile phones.
(Bottom left) The group gets very less sleep but when they do, they are not awoken by the slightest noise even though the boat is constantly rocking.
(Bottom right) Dinesh Kumar gets relief from the cold conditions by smoking a cigarette.
In the six days that photojournalist Satish Bate spent with the fishermen, he realised how difficult it was to while away time after finishing the daily job of pulling fish in from the sea. “The daily battle of standing amidst the foul fish smell, combined with the recurring motion of the boat, makes one feel perpetually sea sick,” he says. “Six days felt like six months for me.”
Bate added that the fishermen were suffering various health ailments because of an undisciplined lifestyle. "They would wake up at odd hours, sometimes even at 3 am, because that area had a good fish catch potential. Fishing would then go on for hours on end. It would end abruptly and the entire crew would sleep by afternoon, only to wake up a few hours later to fish again," he said. "They were craving for vegetables through most of their journey to get a break from the staple of fish and rice. It is unimaginable what conditions the fishermen put themselves through while at sea.”
