Fish Thrown Away on The Beach By Sea Waves

On 2^nd of February 2014, during early evening hours, a rare incident was witnessed on the sea beach of Kadapara, at Kasaragod district of Kerala. This beach is situated on the Arabian Sea in the west coast of India.

At around 4 O’clock in the early evening hours, a huge quantity of fish were thrown on the Kadapara beach by the recurrent rising high tide waves. According to the estimation, not less than a ton (i.e.,1000 Kgs) of fish might have been thrown on the 1 KM beach of Kadapra. The fish were alive after splashing out of the sea and spread on the beach. It was an unexpected bonanza for the people strolling on the beach to grab handful of fish as gift from the sea.

Fishermen hamlet rose getting the news and ran for the effortless prize from the sea. They stacked fish in their gunny bags, baskets and whatever they can to collect as much as until the last fish was fished out of the beach.  Eventually, this was a rarest of the rare incident that had witnessed large quantity of fish thrown out of the sea.

On earlier occasion fishermen had witnessed collecting dead fish after the high tides left them behind on the beaches. However, this rare incident happened first time on Kadapara beach.

Almost all the fish were of the same sizes. That indicates these were from a large shoal that were probably schooling near the beach and a part of the shoal got carried away by the waves and thrown on the beach. The aggregations of fish that gathers together in same locality in an interactive, social way are referred to as shoal of fish. Whereas, the shoal becomes more tightly organized with the fish synchronising with their swimming. So, they all move at the same speed and in the same direction. This is called schooling of fish.

A fish shoal area can be as large as 500 meter, length, breadth and depth. Generally, these kinds of fish shoals are seen under water in the high sea.  In this case, a shoal moving closer to the beach could be the exceptional one. But one can not deny this kind of incident happening elsewhere too. It might just be the lack of evidence or scientific reference that does not site them in research record. 

However, the reporting of this kind of incidence definitely becomes a study point for the marine biologist to study the exceptional social behaviour of the fish shoal and their schooling pattern that attracts them so close to the beaches. Until then this remains rarest of the rare incidence. Yet, it could be the interest of the marine biologist to take a note and ponder upon.