The Chinese Fishing Nets

I have always heard about the Chinese fishing nets at Cochin and always wondered what is so special about those nets. During my visit to Cochin i got chance to see those net in operation along the seashore.

They are called as Chinese nets because they are believed to be first erected here by the Chinese people who came here for business...

In my opinion this must be the first practical application of the Bell Crank Lever. With a nice use of the principle of balance of Moments about a hinge...

At one end of the lever you have got the net and on the other end of the lever there are people who with ropes raise or lower the lever thus making the net go inside or come out of the water.
The moment exerted by the net and its structure at one end is balanced by hanging stones to the other end of the lever.

When the net is to be immersed in water, a person climbs over to the "net" lever thus tipping the balance to the "net" side. Slowly the net goes inside water. They wait for some time and after that they will pull the ropes tied to the "rope" lever. Thus applying moment that tips the balance to the "rope" side and thus the net is out of water.

The fishermen then go and collect whatever fishes are caught in the net.

These nets rise two opposite thoughts in my mind...

first is that how lazy the people must be who used these nets... because since these nets are fixed in one place you can not go into deep water for fishing and must be satisfied with whatever you get. may be they were initially intended for use in the small river or say backwaters in this case...

On the other hand they also represent an amazing application of a simple principle. That is too completely wooden. it is really fun to see the man going up the "net" lever and the net going slowly under water... and then the pulling out operation wherein the effort applied reduce gradually as the moment applied by the weight of the hanging stones increases gradually as the "rope" lever is pulled down...

the most amazing scene is when these net are used in conjunction with a lamp during night. The lamp is hanged to the frame such that it remains just above the water when the net is fully under water.

The fishes and crabs etc are attracted to the light and thus caught in the net...

A whole New World...

I have not seen Venice... whatever I know about that city and the canals there is from photo’s and movies like merchant of Venice.... But after last week visit to Cochin and Alapuzza, Now I can certainly say I have visited the rural version of Venice.

when I looked around while I was roaming around the Backwaters through villages and all, I had an impression like I m moving through a typical village scene and was expecting some typical things like electricity and drinking water shortage.... poor education... no connectivity...etc etc...

But what I saw was totally different. The concept of roads was not there in those villages....
The canals were their roads...
The ferry boat was the bus and just like a normal bus stop...
You could see People standing along the canals at what i will call as "Ferry stops" waiting to board ferries... (see the image of the "bus stop")
People were using small boats like we use cycles...
a whole new perspective where your Doodhwala comes in a small boat...
Children go to school in a ferry boat...

All the transport everything through water transports. Through the main canal small canals were leading to houses just like we have small roads...

Through conversation with people we found out some information about daily life of the village.

Contrary to our assumptions... they had 24 hours electricity supply.... full "drinking water" supply.... almost every home had telephone connection and of course cable connection.
The level of education is also good. The main reason I could see was the missionary schools that ensured the proper penetration of basic education.

We did not face a single incident of language barrier because most of the people knew English including 8-10 years old children….

Another aspect I observed was the "Gulf Readiness" of this region. On very first day when we were looking for return journey booking, we realized that the city had more airline agents than the domestic bus and railway booking agents. All Gulf airlines had offices in Ernakulum.
There are more international flights flying from Cochin than domestic flights.

At least one person from a family is either settled in Gulf of has come back after spending a lot of years in gulf.

The height of this Gulf-o-mania was that most of the schools were teaching Arabic as third language instead of Hindi.

But whatever it was... they had a nice world of their own...