This was probably the most interesting part of being on the beach in Kerala for me! Every morning these guys would go out on the beach and fish. I had never seen fishermen fish like this before! I first walked out to the beach and saw a rope with some men holding on to it. I was intrigued and watched for hours. I tried to figure out what kind of fishing they were doing and I'm still a little unsure, but I think they are using dragnets....
Anyway, at the beginning there were two lines of guys holding on to two ropes that were VERY far apart. I didn't know they were connected to the same net until much later in the morning.
As the morning went on, one of the guys (seemed like a senior guy that was in charge) went out in the water to check on the status of the fish and nets and to start "organizing the net".
It's hard to see in this picture, but this is later in the morning but you can see how huge the net is and how spread apart the net is... the little white dots in the water are the floating part of the net.
Here is one of the lines of guys pulling the net. This was more of the "holding the net" stage. They weren't really pulling, only holding it in place - I think waiting for the fish to get in the net.
This is the other line of guys holding the ropes. It takes a LOT of guys to do this - it was amazing the teamwork and brute strength it took to pull these nets in!!
After a while the "swimmers" went out and started to gather the net while the others held the rope on the beach. The guys in the water would shout out reports to the men on shore about the amount of fish and things like that. The men on shore would cheer! They also had some organized chants they would do when it was time to pull the nets or stop. It was REALLY cool to listen to!
After the guys start to gather the net, the guys on shore start to pull the net in.
They brought the net closer and closer together....
... until it was totally together...
Then they really started to pull it all in! They timed their "pulling" with the waves to make it easier - it seemed sooooo heavy!!!!
More pulling :)
Here is the net after they pulled it in (it's the brown below... it kinda looks like sand)....
Here is the net full of fish (and TONS of jellyfish!).
After that I went to eat breakfast.... so a couple of days later we were staying off of another beach and I got to see what happened next in the process....
They then open the nets and start sorting the fish... you can see all the jellyfish! These jellyfish were weird. They didn't have much stinging power. You could touch them and even pick them up and you couldn't really feel their sting. Their stings just kinda felt itchy... which is nice since they were everywhere!
Here is one pile of the fish that were sorted - anyone know what kind of fish these are?
After they were sorted, they were being bought and sold. Once they were sold they were put into buckets of water and carried off. You can see squid in this picture...
It was interesting to watch. The "money guy" had money rolled in between his fingers and was shouting and yelling and dealing. There were also little tiny fish (like minnow or sardine size) that seemed to have been left and some poor people were pulling them out of the sand and putting them in bags. It was very interesting! I learned a lot! :)
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