The Sea in their Blood

Mumbai's original residents, the fishing community, is struggling to stay afloat amid frequent storms, warmer temperatures, rising sea level, reduced catch and illegal technology

- Shweta Desai

SITTING inside a blue-coloured safe house at the S Cleveland jetty in Mumbai's sea-facing Worli region, Vijay Shantaram Pawar's face lights up with a smile as he digs out an old photograph of him holding a prized catch, a ghol masa or croaker fish, popularly known as sea gold.

"It's a big fish and very expensive. I was able to catch it right here," he says, pointing in the distance towards the recently inaugurated coastal road, over which cars speed by.

The memory of a 2018 photograph, which shows a clear coastline, seems a part of another age.

At the time, Pawar sold the fish for Rs 20,000, earning a decent living fishing off the Worli coast. Marginal fishermen like him ventured into the waters near the jetty. The intertidal zone, a breeding ground, was reclaimed for the 29 km coastal road from Worli to Marine Lines, towards the metropolis' southern tip.

The coastal road, with an underwater tunnel, is showcased as Mumbai's aspirational infrastructure project. But in reality, the ambitious urban connectivity project has robbed the livelihood of hundreds of fisherfolk like Pawar and left Mumbai's indigenous koli community, which has lived on and survived off the city's coastline for over 700 years, in a lurch.

"Our forefathers fished in these waters and built our families. Today, we don't even have the freedom to fish anywhere we want," says Nitesh Patil, chairman of Worli Koliwada Nakhwa Society, about the loss of fishing in the intertidal zone. Worli Koliwada (koli habitat) is among the biggest and oldest fishing habitats of the 40 such koliwadas in the city. Today, 300-odd families are engaged in commercial fishing here, a majority of whom practice traditional handheld fishing and 170 own large and medium boats.