{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Incredible India Travel | Social Impact & Culture Tours","title":"Malpe Fishing Community: The Original Fishermen of the Karnataka Coast and Why They Are Being Pushed Out of the Sea They Have Always Fished","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1133,"description":"The boats leave before you are awake.\nBy the time visitors arrive at Malpe harbour in the morning, the day's work has already been underway for hours. The fishing families of Malpe do not operate on tourist time. They operate on the rhythm of the sea, which means departures in the dark, returns determined by the catch, and the women at the harbour ready to receive, sort and sell before the sun climbs high enough to compromise what has been pulled from the water.\nMalpe is one of the most active fishing harbours on the Karnataka coast. Its covered fish market, where prawns and mackerel are laid out in the early hours by women vendors whose families have been in this trade for generations, is a working commercial operation, not a heritage display. The noise and the smell and the speed of the transactions happening around you are not constructed for visitors. They are the actual morning of a community that has fed the coastal Karnataka region for as long as anyone can trace.\nAnd that community calls itself the moola. The original fishermen of Dakshin Kannada. The word means original in Kannada. And they use it deliberately, because what is happening to them is not a natural evolution of their trade. It is a displacement. From the sea they have always fished. By forces they had no part in creating and over which they have no power.\nIn 2005, 85 percent of the catch on the Karnataka coast was taken by the mechanised sector. The artisanal fishermen, working smaller traditional craft in the inshore waters, were left with the remainder. A regulation passed in 1994 reserves the ten-kilometre inshore zone for traditional fishermen. It has not been enforced. The operational costs of fishing, diesel, ice, boat maintenance, have doubled in recent years. The catch has not increased. And the younger generation is looking at what their parents earn and leaving for the city.\nThis episode is the complete story of the Malpe fishing community.\nWhat You Will Discover in This Episode...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/eWrZ3doNBWF40S0S56sC17IDwfhLRtHiDkqKOrNCvtA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS85Yjg5/Y2Q3ODM2NzZkOTcz/NGJiMWMwMDEzMTFl/YjI3NC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}