Coast Guard ship chases, nabs poachers

CHENNAI: Commandant Arvind Sharma was rather sleepy in the midnight hours of Thursday on board Coast Guard ship Durga Bai Deshmukh. He had not called at any port since September 26 after they left their base station at Chennai and the sea was calm enough to rock him to sleep. The past three days on board the ship -- which was in the high seas somewhere near the Andamans -- had been uneventful for the crew until Sharma noted two blips on its radar.He knew they would have a busy night ahead. He came forward to help his crew locate the position of the two blips, which were hazy enough to have escaped the eyes of the commandants.
Their experience in patrolling the east coast told them that these were boats operated by Myanmarese poachers, who thrive on the rich presence of sea cucumbers and sea horses in the Bay of Bengal. Sharma knew it better than anyone else that these men, belonging to the fishermen community, were masters of their trade and could easily give them the slip.
The mighty Durga Bai Deshmukh, however, had decided to give chase and the moment its towering figure came into view, the Myanmarese boats set sail in opposite directions. One of them, aware that the Coast Guard ship would not be able to navigate in shallow waters, fled towards the coast. However, the Coast Guard vessel managed to apprehend it, with five poachers on board. Some members of the Coast Guard crew were asked to board the boat and take it to Diglipur in north Andamans.
Sharma still had a job to finish. The other boat which had fled towards Myanmarese waters was yet to be traced. The small wooden boat was not showing up on the radar. Sharma decided to light up the sky using illumination cartridges, and then their powerful binoculars spotted the fleeing boat.
It took them around two and half hours to catch up with the poachers. Sharma and his team eventually apprehended the group comprising another five men. They too were being taken to Diglipur to be handed over to the police. From the two boats, the Coast Guard recovered diving equipment, ropes, a good stock of diesel and food items, which were to sustain the poachers midsea for a reasonable duration.
"Though these men belong to the fishing community, they are trained in deep-sea diving. They poach on sea cucumbers and sea horses in our waters. These species are protected under our wildlife protection laws," Commandant Rajendra Nath, spokesperson of Coast Guard, told The Times Of India.
In the last one month alone, Coast Guard has apprehended 140 poachers from 11 boats around the northern group of the Andaman islands.