Paper short abstract:

This presentation challenges the idea of the sea as a wild, ungoverned domain where only the rule of capture reigns. It argues that the "wildness" of the sea is not a "natural" state but brought about by technological development within fisheries that drives competition over collaboration.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1980s, fishing industry in Mumbai has become dominated by bottom trawling and purse seine fishing to the detriment of traditional, passive methods. Even Kolis, indigenous fishers known as the original inhabitants of the city, have largely abandoned their traditional practices in favor of active fishing gear. Madh Island in the northern fringes of Mumbai is among the few places where a centuries-old fishing method based on stationary bag nets (dol) is still widely used.

For dol netters, the sea is a god and informally governed space of more-than-human cohabitation. From dol netters' point of view, foreign-introduced gear such as trawls and purse seines drive efficiency and competition whereas traditional methods cultivate the sustainable coexistence of human beings and marine animals in the sea. In their interactions with the regional government, Koli dol netters thus mobilize a division to destructive and traditional (pāramparik) fishing methods, the latter constituting a practice that cultivates the sea. Through petitions, demonstrations, and negotiations, dol netters are seeking to make the state recognize them as cultivators of the sea in law and its implementation, and to impose stricter regulations on trawls and purse seines. The survival of dol netters essentially depends on curtailing the "wildness" of active fishing methods.