It’s Fishy: Sri Lanka’s New Initiative to Create Artificial Reefs for Breeding Has Riled TN Fishers
News 18A recent Sri Lankan government initiative to dump discarded buses into chosen spots in the sea, to help create artificial reefs for fish breeding has come under criticism from across the Palk Strait. Other Sri Lankan media reports said that the practice had helped breeding for deep sea fishing, which the nation’s southern Sinhala fishers have been very successful at. Licensed Fishing Even granting that sinking old buses as artificial reefs may be a Sri Lankan government policy for some time now, Minister Devananda got into an avoidable controversy in March this year, when he made seemingly ‘contradictory statements’ on permitting Indian fishers to fish in Sri Lankan waters. The Indian Coast Guard and Navy have often looked the other way at ‘innocent’ Sri Lankan fishers ‘poaching’, especially for tuna in their waters.