One of the reasons attributed to the rise in prices is short supply of fish to the Devaraja Fish Market, Shivrampet, where there are several stalls selling only sea fish and other sea food items.
Ibrahim, proprietor of Sea Fish World, one of the stalls here said most of the sea fish to Mysore are brought from the Arabian sea and are supplied from Mangalore and Kerala.
The breeding season for the fish is said to begin around mid-April and the fishermen would not go fishing in the sea for another 45 days. The supply has already come down with very minimum yield and the fish which come to the market are also loaded with eggs, he says.
Breeding season
With the onset of breeding season at the Bay of Bengal, fishermen have stopped venturing into the sea now and most of the fish available in Mangalore and Kerala are being diverted to other places too, which is also the reason for the less quantity of fish entering to the market, he adds.
Moreover with Easter around the corner, most of the fishermen stop fishing activities, and with the children at home for summer holidays they just take a break from their routine adventure for a month, he says.
The rate of sea fish comes down during the month of September and October as these months are considered to be the right season for a bumper crop from the sea world and there are huge quantities of different fish, sometimes even a rare one weighing more than 100 kg flood the market.
The types of sea fish that are available in the market are Seer, Pomfret, Salmon, Tuna, Mackerel, Sardine, Squid, Cat fish, Butter fish, black spot fish, Shark and others.
Apart from these there are also prawns and crabs available. Mackerel that was sold at ` 60 per kg is now ` 120, pomfret which was sold at ` 250 is being sold at ` 360, Seer available at ` 200 is sold at ` 320 and prawns which was ` 250 is now ` 400 per kg.
While this is the case of sea fish, the vendors selling river fish too are not very happy over the sale, as they say their main source of fish comes from KRS dam and not many are involved in spreading their nets.
The river fish Korava, Jalebi, Katla, snake fish are being sold at ` 140 per kg.
But these varieties do not have many takers since the locals fear the effect of fish food that might increase the internal body temperature; and hence are not too comfortable consuming fish in summer.
In all, fish isn’t the hot favourite food for the season, for sure.