A MARINE STORY.

This is a real story of a catastrophe happened in the mid-sea thirty years ago when social media communication facilities were illdeveloped. Therefore, marine information was beyond my reach of cognition in the horizon of knowledge.

The access to formal knowledge is mainly through institutions. Whereas the sources of informal knowledge are multifarious. The information takes the inward journey to the human mind if the human senses are kept open. As far as I think, your acquired information in your storehouse of knowledge is much more in quantity than that by formal learning. Interaction with people with a variety of life experiences contributes strange knowledge which probably may be a remote possibility in a normal life span.

I had treated patients of various occupations, who narrated their strange experiences in an interesting manner, during the long rehabilitation period. One of that kind is depicted below.

I had a fisherman patient who was doing fishing in deep and midsea. He was a traditional fisherman doing fishing using floating" Katamaram",(wooden blocks bound together), with his parents. He was uneducated but a very skilled fisherman who knew the heart of the sea. He was then attached to a fishing ship of a wealthy businessman from Visakhapatanam. He could not achieve an All India licence for captaincy as he was not a matriculate. But for his job, no one could outdo him. But with the hard work and inspiration of his educated wife, he passed his SSLC in the fifth attempt and he achieved his captain licence in the same year. After a couple of years his shipowner, who believed that his new captain was a fortune for him, sold the ship to a Tanzanian fishing company along with his captain, who also was happy to be in the new prospective company. He was paid three lakh rupees per month as the owner understood that the new captain was an asset for him.

His ship would go to midsea with his team of crew and workers and catch only selected fish such as prawns and kanavas which had export potential. He was skilled to identify the presence of the cluster formation of his selected fish by seeing the surface of the sea from a distance. He would collect the selected fish and throw out the other fish into the sea for its survival, thereby keeping the ethics of fishing. In his opinion, he would let the overtaking Pakistani and Bangladeshi fishing ships go, as they could not identify the cluster formations and so would catch all unwanted fish and even snakes also, which are utilised for making dog feed.

His team would peel the whole fish in fresh condition and put it in the large freezer. They would then sail to UK, USA, and European countries to export their commodity observing export regulations. They had jolly good time on the ship, eating fried prawns and drinking, abundantly available scotch whisky as they had plenty of money.

Years went on like this in merriment, in his successful career. But what was ignored was the physical health of our fisherman captain. A disaster was the consequence. Our captain had a massive cerebral hemorrhage and became unconscious when they were fishing in the middle of the sea. The crew had nothing but to do, other than shouting for help, SOS(save our souls). The communication facilities in a fishing ship were not as much adequate as those in passenger ships. They lost their hope for his survival. A small barge unexpectedly appeared in their vicinity. Then the whole crew and workers shouted and showed crude alarming signals to the barge. The barge people could smell some danger in the fishing ship and it approached fast to the ship. They carried him in the barge and speedily reached the Tanzanian coast. He was transported immediately to a hospital for emergency life-saving treatment. In the meantime, communication was given to Sree Chitra Medical Center, Trivandrum for keeping ready for receiving a patient. He was air evacuated to Trivandrum. Critical care treatment was given for one month in a coma state. When he became concious, it was found that the left side of his body was paralysed. I took the responsibility of physiotherapy and he started walking freely after six months.

This long six months period was the opportunity for dissemination of strange interesting knowledge of the middle sea, deep water fishing, and export to western countries. My patient was happy to illustrate the different protocols of fishing. He said that the peeled fresh fish placed in the freezer will remain like a rock for more than one year without decay and disintegration. They are great contributors of foreign currency in abundance to our country. The Tanzanian employer of my patient reserved his captain's vacancy in his ship for two years due to his confidence in him for further enterprises. My patient became fully fit, joined back, and is now doing his job taking maximum care not to have another disastrous episode. He is still a perpetual source of information on middle sea deep water fishing, the different behavior of various aquatic creatures, and habitation levels of the widespread unending oceans.

Thank you