Retting Of Coconut Husk - A Unique Case Of Water Pollution On The South West Coast Of India

The extensive backwaters of Kerala are the sites for a flourishing cottage industry - the coir industry. This enterprise almost exclusively located along the 590 km coastal belt of Kerala, provides direct employment to over half a million people in the state and produces nearly 90% of the total coir goods in the world. The shallow bays and lagoons of the 30 backwater systems of the state are traditional areas for the retting of coconut husk for the production of the coir fibre. The paper examines the environmental status of the retting grounds in Kerala, in relation to the biotic communities. The study revealed that retting activity has caused large scale organic pollution along with the mass destruction of the flora and fauna, converting sizeable sections of the backwaters into virtual cesspools of foul smelling stagnant waters. High values of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, BOD5 associated with anoxic conditions and low community diversity of plankton, benthic fauna, fish, shell fish, wood boring and fouling organisms were the outstanding feature of the retting zones.

"|mpact of trawling on sea bottom and its living communities along the inshore waters of southwest coast of India'’

Mechanized fishing started in Indian waters in mid —fifties and large-scale operation of trawl fishing began in the mid sixties by the surfeit of individual entrepreneurs. The southwest coast of India especially the coastal waters of Kerala are the most productive area in the subcontinent and the state has been in the forefront in marine fish production (Kurup, 2001a). Though the coastline of Kerala is one tenth of the coastline of India, the state occupies the foremost position in the marine fish production of the country, accounting for more than 30% of the marine fish landings (Thomas, 2000). The coastal waters of Kerala have rich and diversified fishery resources, which are prone to heavy exploitation by a unprecedently high number of fishing gears, among them, mechanized bottom trawlers with a numerical strength of 4550 (Kurup, 2001a) against the permissible number of 1145 (Kalawar, et al., 1985) are the most destructive. Trawling operations during monsoon periods in Kerala has been a subject of controversy between traditional fishermen and trawl fishers on a subject that trawl fishing destroys large amount of juveniles and young ones of fishes since this period is the major breeding season of most of the fish and prawns (John, 1996). Therefore Government of Kerala imposed a ban on bottom trawling activities from 1988 onwards for a period varying from 21-70 days, which usually commences from June 15th. Though many studies revealed that large amount of non-target groups were destroyed in the commercial trawl fishing in the Indian waters, no concerted study has been conducted so far to evaluate the real impact of bottom trawling on the sea bottom and its living communities. The present study was conducted to assess the impact of excessive bottom trawling exerted on the sea bottom habitat and its living communities, which would be useful in impressing up on the seriousness of habitat degradation and biotic devastation, enabling the concerned to adopt relevant conservation and management steps to conserve the resources for sustainable exploitation