Blast Fishing in Sri Lanka Facilitated by Explosives Smuggled from India

A party of visitors were in for an unpleasant surprise when boating at the Pigeon Island National Park in eastern Sri Lanka on what appeared to be a nice morning by the sea. There was a loud boom nearby while they were admiring the perse aquatic life in the water around them.

They noticed that the fish they had been observing were now either struggling to swim or floated lifeless on the surface. Through the transparent water, more dead fish could be seen on the seafloor.

The tour group's guide, Hans-Georg Kehse, realised they had just dodged a fish-catching explosion.

According to Kehse, who owns a pe shop close to the park, "Fish bombs or dynamite fishing has become a routine occurrence in and around Pigeon Island National Park, where sounds of such explosions have been commonplace."

He calculated that the location of the most recent explosion was just 400 metres, or a quarter mile, away from his tour group. If it had been any closer, according to Kehse, a human tragedy might have occurred, dealing a fatal blow to Sri Lanka's already struggling maritime tourism sector.

An explosive is used in dynamite fishing to kill or stun large numbers of fish. A fish can be killed or have its swim bladder ruptured by the underwater blast's shockwaves, which causes the animal to lose buoyancy. Fishers only need to scoop them out of the water to make them easy prey. However, the practise devastates marine environments like coral reefs and indiscriminately kills or hurts all marine life nearby.

According to Arjan Rajasuriya, a top coral expert in Sri Lanka and former researcher with the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency, or NARA, corals are the primary source of support for underwater life in a marine park like Pigeon Island. Repeated blasts can break the substrate of that coral growth, preventing its recovery.

The majority of Sri Lanka's southern coral reefs have already bleached, and those in other locations are in danger. The biggest concentration of live corals may be found along the eastern coast, where Pigeon Island is situated, but blast fishing poses a severe threat to them, according to Rajasuriya.

According to Dharshana Jayawardena of Dive Sri Lanka, a ping tour provider, shipwreck locations, which draw enormous numbers of fish, have also turned become targets of blast fishing. According to Jayawardena, this is especially alarming because ping tourism is thought to be essential to Sri Lanka's tourism industry's ability to recover from the Covid-19 outbreak and the country's ongoing economic crisis.

It is only a matter of time before a tourist is hurt, which would be the end for Sri Lanka's ping tourism business, Jayawardena told Mongabay, given the rate at which blast fishing is occurring, including near pe sites.