Karwar: This rainy season may drill a bigger hole in the pockets of fish lovers.

Not just the prices, even the number of varieties of fishes may dwindle as fishing has been stopped in Uttara Kannada district for the last one week following cyclone in the Arabian Sea.

As usual, the Fisheries Department of the state imposed a ban on deep sea fishing for two months from June.

 The monsoon season is also breeding season for fish. But this season, most of the fishing boats have stopped fishing in March itself as there was little availability of fish in the sea.

 A few boats did fishing in deep sea but that was not profitable either. It is said unscientific fishing like bull troll and light fishing are the reasons for shortage of fish in these parts of the sea.

With all these reasons, there was no sufficient supply of fish even during summer and it has affected dry fish industry in the district. Ganapati Harikantra, a fisherman at Baithkol fishing port said fishing stopped for last two months here and it has been affecting consumers.

 “There are no fish even for fishermen and selling fish comes next,” he added. However, fishermen are hoping that they will catch good fish in coming season and demand proper implementation of rules like ban on light fishing and bull troll fishing all over the country.

 Otherwise it will be a big harm to the fish industry in the country, they say.