The fisheries ministry on Tuesday revised rules to allow picking sea cucumber with scuba diving gear and using nets with the permission of island councils to catch fish found in lagoons.
The longstanding bans were lifted through the first amendment brought to the general fisheries regulations.
Collecting sea cucumbers using scuba diving gear was banned in the 1970s. It was also prohibited under the general fisheries regulations enacted in 2020.
Diving to pick sea cucumbers was omitted from the list of banned fisheries activities in the amendments gazetted on Tuesday.
Fisheries ministry's director general Adam Ziyad told Adhadhu that sea cucumbers are usually collected by diving despite the prohibition. While it has become very common, the harshest action that could be taken was imposing a fine of about MVR 200, he said.
The decision to permit it was made upon the request of many people during discussions with fishers. If the ban on collecting sea cucumber using scuba diving gear was to be enforced, they said they would lose 70 percent of income, Ziyad said.
Despite authorization under the new rules, any fisheries activity with scuba diving gear would only be allowed for people with diving training and certification.
The other activity permitted by the amendments was using nets to catch fish that enter lagoons. The previous regulations only allowed licensed fishing boats to catch bait fish from lagoons of inhabited islands.
Ziyad said it was permitted because using nets to catch fish that enter lagoons is done on some islands as a cultural activity.
"When we prohibit it to that level in our regulations, what happens is that something so big done collectively on the island, which relatively doesn't cause much damage to the environment, becomes illegal and we have a situation where the entire island is culpable," Ziyad said.
However, permission to use nets must be sought from the island or city council.
The protection of turtles and tortoise was also removed from the regulation as the creatures are protected under a different law, which previously posed legal problems due to enforcement under two regulations.
The prohibition on the use of guns to kill fish was also removed from the regulation as the import of such guns are prohibited by a defense ministry regulation, ending the enforcement under two regulations.
