Engineering wing of Fisheries Department has made ready a 280-metre-long and 15-metre-wide channel in Mandapam north sea, 300 metres beyond Indian Coast Guard (ICG) station jetty, for free movement of fishing boats.
The fishing harbour sub-division, which had taken up the Rs.55-lakh project in April last year to dredge and deepen the channel by 0.6 metres for a 280-metre stretch, completed the work and began installing tripod beacons in the stretch.
The work, which should have been completed in December last year, suffered delay as the Thoothukudi-based contractor died, sources said.
Fishermen had already started navigating through the channel and the installation of beacons would help them identify the stretch in the night and in the early hours when they set out for fishing, the sources said. “We took up the work on Tuesday and the installation of beacons will be completed by the week end,” the sources added.
The channel would also be of great help to the ICG to move its vessels, the sources said, adding the fishermen and the ICG did not have to wait for high tide to move the vessels in the stretch.
The deepening project was taken up as the fishermen faced trouble in moving their vessels whenever there was a low tide in the north sea. The existing channel, which started from ICG station jetty, was deep enough for free movement of vessels only up to 300 metres from the starting point as the shallow stretch begins thereafter.

Source : The Hindu