Ihavandhoo youth gives up fishing to join tourism jobs

The past four months have been tough for the people of Haa Alifu Ihavandhoo.

The island, which is completely dependent on fishing, faced severe financial difficulties due to the recent decline in fishing. Some of the fishing vessels had to be sold or leased to other islands.

Ihavandhoo is an exemplary island in the fisheries sector. The majority of people engage in fisheries in this one island and most of the youth are involved in it too. However, the island council believes that more than the bad fishing, the island was affected deeply by the minimum wage set for resort employees.

While the minimum wage set by the government in November doubled the salaries of most resort employees, the youth were then forced to second guess their careers since they were not earning much in the fisheries sector to begin with.

"Fishing brings in a really good income, actually. MVR 40,000 per month can be earned on good fishing days," said Ihavandhoo Council President Ahmed Sobah.

"But they had to look for alternatives because fishing had been dry and they had no income in the past months”.

Ihavandhoo currently has 19 fishing vessels that go out to fish daily. Twelve new vessels are ready to be launched. Eighty percent of the island's youth are fishermen. This includes children who have just left school.

Sobah said that during the time fishing had gone bad and the income had gone to zero, a large number of the youth had gotten off their fishing vessels and taken to resort jobs. As a result, two vessels had to be sold from Ihavandhoo, inoperable without sufficient crew. Two other vessels were leased to another island.

When the fishing recovered, Sobah said that there were not enough people left on the island to make the most out of the fishing season.

"We from the council even visited separate households to see if there will be people who can join the fishing crews, because there were many vessels waiting to take off had they enough crew for a trip", Sobah said, noting that this has never happened on the island.

He said that the vessels on the island are now going out with skeleton crews.

Sobah also noted the other reasons why the youth have lost interest in fishing. The cost of fishing is sometimes high. In the north, there is often no way to weigh fish during good fishing times. If there is no MIFCO boat nearby the island, then the fishermen have to take their catch five atolls down to Felivaru in Lhaviyani Atoll. Sobah said that this is a big additional cost incurred by the fishermen.

He noted that this is something that needs to be improved if we want to keep the youth in the fisheries sector in the future.

While the Maldivian fisheries industry has recovered again after a prolonged break, the biggest challenge faced by fishermen is the lack of fish weighing and selling. They also suffer from lack of resources; the inoperable ice plants in several islands are another complaint that has fisherman struggling to preserve their fresh fish onboard even.