Goemkarponn Desk
CANACONA: A Fishing Boat along alongwith day’s Catch and Fishing-Nets turns turtle into the Sea at Rajbhag Beach as all the Nine Fishermen on board were rescued with timely assistance of Life-Guards personnel and locals on Sunday morning.
According to Fire and Emergency Services (FES), ‘My Brother’ fishing boat (Path) bearing Registration No. INDGA01MM1173 belonging to one Deepak alian Govardhan Gopan Pagi of Colomb had ventured early morning into the sea from Talpona Jetty and was returning back from the Sea with the day’s Catch(Fish) to the Talpona Jetty.
The Boat howerver, about 150 metres before reaching the Jetty while trying to enter the Talpona River Mouth to anchor at the Jetty capsized in the seawaters itself after large –wave turned it turtle, throwing all the nine(9) fishermen board in the Sea. The area where the River meets the Sea is always considered as extremely dangerous due to formation of underwater sanddunes and most boats prefer to navigate this treacherous stretch during the high-tide period to avoid boats from hitting sanddunes.
The Day’s catch of small and big-size fishes also went down into the seawaters, and the Fishing-Nets too came out floating from the unpside down capsized Canoe. The incident occurred at about 11 am about 100 metres away from the Rajbag beach shore, situated behind The Lalit Golf and Spa Resorts, a 5-star hotel in the locality.
It is learnt that while all the men were thrown into the seawater began to struggle to keep themselves aloft, atleast three of the fishermen who some got entangled to the fishing-nets and litrarily got exhausted after their attempts to break free, were soon assisted by Life-Guards who after seeing the incident from the shore came rushing with Jet-Ski and rescued all three, bsafely bringing them to the shore. Many of the locals also came rushing on the shore, saw the rest of 6 others, came swimming in the tumultuous seawaters reaching the shore safely on their own.
Meanwhile , responding to SoS calls FES personnel and Policemen too reached the shore, and later alongwith over 200 people assisted to pull the Fishing-Boat (Path) and Fishing Nets successfully on the shore sands.
Locals residents of Rajbag-Tarir-Talpona including Former CMC Chairperson and Fishermen community leader Ratnakar Dhuri blamed governments (past and present) for not solving the issue of dredging at the River-Mouth, a bone of serious incidents every year. ‘This gall area gets accumulated sand-dunes underwater and as the waves gets bigger there, the boats turns turtle. Though fishermen always takes due care and caution at this Gall (Sea meeting river waters) area, every year atleast one Fishing boat capsizing incident takes place here. There is a need to construct a concrete –slab type retaining wall on one side atleast at distance of 1 Km and thereafter the sanddunes formed in the water track should be excavated. Every year we making this demand with the government, with the MLA,and also to MP candidates, but when they get elected no one care and asks anything. Before any fatal incident takes places, , we are requesting government, also our MLA and also wants to remind our new MP to carry out the safety works for the benefits of the fishermen’s activity.
