Farmers cultivating shrimps and fish for sale are exposed to a new kind of danger sea otters. Many in islands adjoining Ernakulam especially in Pizhala and Kadamakudy are facing this new menace. They say that the animals move in through the waters in packs and eat the fish. “I normally go and check on the fish in the early mornings, during the day and in the evenings and night. Since I have leased 3-4 farms for cultivating shrimps, I am out for a good part of the day and return only in the night. But this sea otter menace is dangerous. Now I don’t go alone,” said Anandhan K, a fish farmer in Pizhala. He said that two or three of them go together. “We carry crackers and burst them when we see the otters in groups. Since they come in groups of 910 and they are good swimmers, we can’t see them properly.”The farmers say that the animals should not be harmed, according to law. “So we try to chase them away by making noise, lighting a fire near the waters. While they find it difficult to cut the nets in case of cages, it is in open farms that the animals are happy hunting fish,” he added. Krishi Vigyan Kendra fisheries expert P A Vikas said they had been getting com plaints of the menace from different farmers. Farmers say that the animals swim through the river and come into the islands.”They hide in the bushes or in the dark areas in the waters and wait for us to move away.Then they eat the fish and throw it out in the land, dirtying the entire place,” said K A Thomas, a farmer at Kadamakudy. “The animals don’t mean harm but they can attack us for fear of being attacked. They will stay in the water quietly,” he said. The farmers use lights as a means to ward off the animals. Anandhan said in a couple of months the fish would get bigger and then the menace would be fiercer. “We have to work something out by then otherwise we will incur huge damage in our investment.”
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