On November 29, 2021, I had just returned to my hometown of Gwadar after completing my master’s degree in Sussex. A lot had changed in just 14 months.
As I entered the town, the first things I noticed were several new roads and a lot of new construction in progress. But the next and most unusual sight was of a huge rally of women on Marine Drive, a seafront, four-lane road in the west of Gwadar. Hundreds of women of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, but largely from the local fishing communities, dominated this rally, which convened the same day I arrived. I have lived in Gwadar almost my entire life here, but had never seen something like this before. To find out what exactly was going on I had to put on my journalist hat as soon as I reached home.
It turned out that a local political activist, Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman, was leading a movement to protest a list of issues Gwadar is still dealing with, despite decades of “development” work in the town.
Today, Gwadar, and particularly its port, is known as the gateway to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and is therefore an important city for both China and Pakistan. This new interest from Beijing and Islamabad changed what was a little-known fishing village in Balochistan to an emerging port city. While a lot has changed for the better for Gwadar’s residents, many basic issues still remain unaddressed, like water and power supply, proper healthcare, and so on. One of the biggest issues of all, not just in Gwadar but in the rest of the coastal belt of Balochistan, is illegal fishing. For decades illegal fishing has made life hard for those relying on the fisheries economy and ocean as the main source of food. This includes almost the entire coastal population.
To navigate this situation better, it is important to understand what illegal fishing exactly is. As per the World Ocean Review, it is a violation of fisheries laws and regulations of a state, where foreign vessels enter a certain jurisdiction without legal permission and target high-value species that are illegal to fish. Often these boats deploy outlawed wire nets behind their vessels, dragging the nets along the seafloor to pull up everything that comes their way. They thus end up with huge quantities of bycatch, which they usually dump back into the sea (or sell to local factories in extremely low prices). They then misreport the kind of species and quantities of their haul – if they ever report their catches at all (many don’t).
To address the problem, several countries, including Pakistan, have established laws and signed international treaties, yet illegal fishing is the world’s fourth-ranked illicit activity right behind drug trafficking, counterfeiting, and human trafficking, according to Interpol.
“They have left nothing in the ocean for us. And yet, we see them every other night. They don’t sail in the day anymore after Maulana’s protests but have complete authority over the ocean at nights,” a local fisherman from Pishukan, a fishing village in the west of Gwadar, told me. “Sometimes these large vessels deliberately get so close to our small fishing boats that we fear they would harm us.”
Almost all the fishermen I talked to while reporting for this story in Gwadar and the fishing villages nearby – Pishukan, Jiwani, Pasni, Ormara, and in Lasbela district – have a similar story. “Illegal fishing has a long history in this coastal belt and over the years the issue has become more and more sensitive. We are not sure who owns the trawlers that come from Sindh and sometimes internationally, but one thing we know is that they are a very powerful mafia with complete political support,” explained a fishermen’s activist from Jiwani.
The uncertainty and fear of powerful backers may be reasons why most of the fishermen, activists, and officers at the Balochistan fisheries department I talked to asked to remain anonymous for their own safety. For the fishing community and those indirectly related to the fisheries economy, illegal fishing is part of their everyday experience. But anyone who has lived here is aware of the issue. Growing up, the first time I heard the word “trawlering” was in 2003, via a locally shot short film. Though the story revolved around a domestic problem between a couple, the socioeconomic background in the film was mainly rooted in the fishing community. This shows how old the issue is.
But, upon searching more, I found out that the issue dates back to the 1960s or even earlier. The first time it was taken notice of was in the 1970s through the Balochistan Fisheries Ordinance 1971, which was then amended several times in the later decades. This ordinance declares fishing by large vessels or trawlers with wire nets to be illegal, especially in the zone 12 nautical miles or less from the shore.
Pakistan divides its sea into three zones, where Zone 3 (from 20 to 200 nautical miles, which marks the extent of the country’s UNCLOS-defined Exclusive Economic Zone) is controlled by the federal government. The zone up to 12 nautical miles from the shore (Zone 1) is the domain of the provinces Sindh and Balochistan, and between 12 to 20 nautical miles is declared a buffer zone. “The trawler mafias do not care about any nautical miles. They fish wherever and whenever they want. They carry weapons. If we, after seeing them, scream in protesting their activity and if our boats come closer, they start open firing,” explained a fisherman from Gwadar.
“Having seen this and heard [similar stories] from fellow fishermen, for our own safety, we now stay silent even if we see them afar or close. They take our fishing nets worth thousands of rupees, along with their huge wire nets that drag everything along the seafloor…