The Sri Lanka Navy has arrested 63 people for illegal fishing using prohibited nets, banned gear, winch machines and tractors during special operations conducted between September 1 and September 11, Hiru News reported.
Naval personnel also impounded 26 dinghies, one cab and two tractors used in the operations.
All those arrested, along with the seized vessels, vehicles and prohibited equipment, have been handed over to the respective regional offices of the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources for further legal action.
Update (September 13): NewsFirst puts the total at 65 and names the locations
NewsFirst, filing later on Sunday, gives the total as 65 rather than 63 — and its breakdown reconciles the two figures exactly rather than contradicting them.
Of the 65, 63 were held for using banned nets, illegal fishing methods, winches and tractors, which is precisely Hiru’s figure. The remaining two were arrested in a separate joint operation with the police in Kattankudy town, along with 44 banned fishing nets. Hiru appears to have reported the core enforcement figure and omitted the Kattankudy case.
NewsFirst also supplies the geography Hiru left out. The operations were run by the Eastern, Northern and Southeastern Naval Commands and covered Jamaliya, Foul Point, Ilankanthai, Pigeon Island, Nadithivu Island, Alles Garden, Nilaveli, Kaddaikadu, Vettalakeni, Chundikulam and Arugam Bay. Suspects and seized gear went to Fisheries Department offices at Cod Bay, Kinniya, Mutur, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Jaffna and Pottuvil.
The pattern is consistent with earlier instalments in this series: the enforcement is concentrated in the north and east, not island-wide despite the framing.
The largest sweep in the series so far
The arrest figure is the highest in the Navy’s periodic inshore enforcement reports this year, and it was achieved in a shorter window than the sweeps that preceded it.
| Period | Arrests |
|---|---|
| First quarter | 41 |
| April | 77 |
| May 16–31 | 44 |
| September 1–11 | 65 |
April’s 77 arrests came over a two-week crackdown and May’s 44 over a 16-day sweep. The current figure of 65 covers 11 days, giving a higher daily rate than either.
Whether that reflects intensified patrolling or increased illegal activity cannot be determined from the report, which offers no interpretation of the numbers.
The equipment named
The gear listed — winch machines and tractors — points to shore-based hauling of nets rather than offshore fishing, with tractor-mounted winches used to drag large nets onto beaches. Earlier cases in this series have been handed to the Fisheries Department for prosecution under the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act; Hiru does not say which provisions are being invoked here.
The seizure of 26 dinghies alongside one cab and two tractors indicates operations spanning both water and shoreline.
Earlier sweeps in this series have repeatedly targeted commercial explosives and dynamite fishing in northern and eastern waters. Last week the Navy was involved in a separate case in which a woman was held with 3,200kg of dynamite-caught fish in Mullaitivu.
Not reported
Neither outlet says how many separate operations made up the sweep, what charges the 65 face, whether any have been produced in court, or what happens to the impounded dinghies and tractors. Neither states whether explosives were recovered, or explains why the Kattankudy pair were counted separately from the main total.
Hiru gives no locations at all for the September operations, unlike earlier reports in this series; NewsFirst supplies them but gives no district-level breakdown of the arrests.
Ada Derana was unreachable behind a CloudFront block. The Daily Mirror, the Island, Daily FT, Colombo Gazette, EconomyNext, Daily News and News.lk had not filed on the sweep at the time of writing.
