No Rains, No Winds, No Cyclone: A Fisher Science View of Cyclone Fengal’s Flopshow

Read all stories in the Science of the Seas series here.

December 10, 2024

Fishers view storms with nervous anticipation. Storms, particularly thunderstorms and cyclones, with heavy rains and rough weather that churn the sea bottom-up, are great for fishing. On November 23, the Indian Meteorology Department (IMD) reported the formation of a low-pressure over southeast Bay of Bengal. On November 29, the storm graduated to the status of a cyclonic storm and was named Fengal.

Its imminent landfall, expected rainfall – particularly over Chennai – and its foot-dragging progression were breathlessly tracked by bloggers, reporters and anxious municipal officials. After its landfall on November 30, government officials and political leaders congratulated themselves on having solved Chennai’s long-standing drainage problem by posting photos of dry roads or ongoing work to drain them, even as other parts of the state were devastated by torrential downpours. Detractors posted counter-photos of waterlogged areas in Chennai. Trolls found new targets for their foul content in weather-bloggers and IMD, both of whom did a commendable job in tracking a whimsical weather phenomenon.

But through it all, in Urur Kuppam, the south Chennai fishing village that veteran hook-and-line fisher and elder S. Palayam calls home, fishers slept soundly.

No special measures were taken to pull their boats to safety away from the sea in anticipation of Fengal. Barring frequent visits to the seashore to see the sea and reassure themselves, the fishers let the boats lie where they would on any day; they had been fastened tighter with mooring ropes from the bow and the two sides, and the nets and gear had been weighed down. If any care was taken to pull the boats away from shore, it was out of respect for the New Moon-tide expected on November 30. Contrast that to 2023, when in anticipation of Cyclone Michaung, they had moved their boats and gear up the Besant Nagar beach well beyond the cricket pitch.

“Fengal was not a cyclone, if you ask me,” Palayam declared after the storm crossed land far south of Chennai bringing heavy rains to southern districts. A voice note recorded when he was standing at the mouth of the Adyar River on the morning of 1 December was tinged with disappointment:

“The river is not running wide, Anna (brother). One shouldn’t lie about these things. If you’re in doubt, you can send someone to verify. No harm in that. But the river is not running wide. The rains have not been intense enough. I can say this with certainty. Far from running wide, the river mouth is being silted up by the sand [being brought in by sea currents], and there is not much of a discharge of waters from the river’s catchment. It is not as we had feared, not even like what we saw in 2023. It may be a fact that various places may have recorded 22 cm, 30 cm. . .or 13 cm in Meenambakkam leading to closure of airport. But come to the seashore and observe. There’s not much water discharge [from the river]. There is a reduction in salinity which I could sense when I tasted the sea water. There is a small difference in salinity between yesterday and today. It is now a little blander. One must see if this dilution may be a result of discharge from northern rivers pushed ashore by the Vanni karsala [northerly nearshore current]. Our river also may have drained a little freshwater into the sea. Because the current was still (Iruva) near the river mouth, when I tasted the water, it was a little bland.” 

Palayam’s rejection of the cyclone title accorded to Fengal is not a challenge to the World Meteorological Organisation’s carefully worked out system of naming and tracking tropical storms. Rather his statement is founded on another equally carefully worked out, though entirely different way of making sense of and attitude towards the seas.

To understand Palayam’s interpretations of the marine phenomenon, one needs to have some understanding of his science.  But before I give you a background on fisher science, I will share a brief note on how fishers view nature, then present a general account of storms and cyclones as fishers see it. I will then narrate Palayam’s observations on Fengal and explain what it means. Finally, I will engage with some basics of fisher and western sciences and invite you to view the former for what it is rather than through the lens of western science.

Nature as kin

The sciences of artisanal communities are place-based and place-dependent and draw upon generations of embodied knowledge and wisdom accumulated through countless interactions of fishers with the local seas and nature. They provide rich insights into natural phenomena as they play out in hyper-local settings.

In the fishers’ worldview, the wind, as paattan (grandfather), and the sea, as Kadalamma (sea mother), are kin. Both are described as alive, whimsical, prone to provocation and appeasement, powerful and ultimately unknowable. The sea and all of nature are mysterious beings who cannot be understood by ‘knowing’ a few parts. That is why “sensing” or “making sense of” is a better descriptor of the objective of fisher science than “knowing.” The former, when combined with Aṟam (அறம்) – customary norms, rituals and practices of virtuous behaviour and doing right by the sea – provides fishers with ways of living with and surviving the seas, and perhaps even thriving. This is a significant departure from the western scientific method’s objective of generating ‘knowledge’ as a means of demystifying nature, which is described as a knowable, inanimate collection of resources that can be scientifically exploited for human use.

Specifics may vary, but fishers across the coast of India read storms by looking for changing combinations of wind directions and speeds and ocean currents and ocean conditions. IMD uses a god’s eye satellite view and instrumentation to read storms. Fishers use a beach-side view and their senses, and also add IMD’s observation to their database for analyses.

Winds, currents, storms

Chennai fishers categorise winds based on the directions they blow from – Eeran (Easterly); Kachan Eeran (Southeasterly); Neenda Kachan (Southerly); Kachan Kodai (Southwesterly); Kodai (Westerly); Vadamarai (Northwesterly); Kun Vaadai (North-Northwesterly); Neenda Vaadai (Northerly) and Vaadai Eeran (Northeasterly). The Kun Vaadai is the dreaded storm wind, and Kachan Eeran is the oppositional calming wind, affectionately referred to as the Thennal. Vaadai Eeran, Eeran and Kachan Eeran are sea breezes; Kachan Kodai, Kodai and Vadamarai are land breezes.

Ocean currents are of four kinds also based on the directions of origin – Vanni (Northerly); Thendi (Southerly); Olini (Easterly from sea to land) and Memeri (Westerly). Of particular interest to fishers is the direction and speed of the current in nearshore waters (Karsala), midsea (Mela Vellam), surface current (vellam) and seafloor current (Tharai vellam). Of all these currents, Olini is the strongest. The tsunami is the extreme manifestation of the Olini in this part of the coast.

The fisher calendar divides the year into two distinct seasons, each containing one monsoon within it. The Vaadai season characterised by northerly winds (Vadamarai to Vaadai Eeran) and Vanni currents brackets the primary season of storms and the Northeast monsoon. During the Tamil months of Aippasi (mid-October to mid-November), the sea is expected to resemble a Perunkadal (ocean); during Karthigai (mid-November to mid-December) the sea quietens down and resembles a Sirukadal (sea). The Southwest monsoon, the Kodai naal (hot summer days) and the Kodai Puyal (summer storms) occur within the Kachan season from mid-January to mid-September.

Intense rain and thunderstorm events that qualify as a storm will be announced by roaring Kun Vaadai winds, the onset and/or intensification of Vanni currents from the north. If the storm comes with a lot of rain, the river will run wide flushing out the sandbar at the estuary. The floodwaters will push a muddy brown plume deep into sea; the Vanni current will turn the plume southwards. As the storm progresses, the wind swings anti-clockwise until the Thennal begins to gust from the Kachan Eeran (southeast) side announcing the storm’s landfall. The Thennal weakens the Vanni current, causing it to fold over and turn to a brisk southerly current calming the seas. Fishing is particularly productive on the days of the Thennal following a powerful storm, ideally with thunder and lightning. See here to understand “The Life of a Storm”.

Fengal failed as a storm

On November 23, when the IMD announced the formation of a depression off the western coast of Sumatra, Palayam learnt of a strange occurrence when he visited Pulicat, 35 km to the north. The fishers there reported that currents were flowing from the south, instead of north. In Urur Kuppam too the currents were weak and the sea was calm. One Urur fisher who returned with 3 kg of big size prawn, did not set his net again because the net had also brought up large numbers of Paarkattu Nandu, a Red rock crab notorious for snipping through nets. The presence of these crabs meant a clear water column above the seafloor, quite contrary to the expectation of turbid waters and turbulent seas during Karthigai (mid-November to mid-December).

The second flag went up on November 26, when an alert was issued about the possibility of a cyclone forming. Here are excerpts from Palayam’s voice note to me early that morning:

A sea breeze has been howling since last night; the sea is not rough the way it can be with gusty Kun Vaadai winds. Sea breeze should never come. If it does, it means that the storm is weak. If that storm is intensifying, we should be getting gusts of Kun Vaadai winds. Because the storm is not intense, all fishers are sleeping soundly. Yesterday, when I went to the river mouth, I noticed that the Vanni current had cut a deep berm about 4 feet high. By now, if the current had been strong, the currents should have continued cutting the berm right up to the village. I told the postwoman madam when I met her yesterday “Amma, don’t expect the rains of 2023. Don’t be worried that Chennai will drown. Such heavy rains are unlikely. Even if it rains, why complain when waters come. Let the rains come. Every day, I walk to the river. Only if it rains will the river run wide. Who will water the plants? We will also get water to drink. Let’s see what god gives us. Whatever we get, we will live with. This storm is not likely to be intense; that much I can say. When a storm blows from the north at 100 km, a 120 km wind from the south is needed to neutralise it. But this is not like that. In Pondicherry and Cuddalore and other districts, the situation may be different and there may be more damage. But for us, because of the sea breeze, I can say that Chennai will not be harmed much.”

Palayam referred to Fengal as an Ūmai Puyal  (ஊமை புயல்) or mute storm. Cyclonic winds are expected to roar and howl. Fengal did neither. Just a day before the storm’s landfall, when much was being made of the efficient drainage of rainwater in Chennai, Palayam called to say that the absence of discharge from the Adyar, and hence poor rainfall at least in Adyar’s catchment, was proven by the fact that the sand bar blocking the river mouth remained undisturbed.

Once one understands this, it is easy to appreciate how a storm with windspeeds less than 63 kmph may still be called a cyclone or sooravali by Palayam, even though it fails to meet IMD’s benchmark speed for a cyclone, or how this clearly well-qualified, though slow-moving cyclone announced by IMD, fails to meet the fisher standards.

Cyclone or not? But basics first…

Each science has a way of categorising phenomena, a peculiar standpoint, assumptions and myths they subscribe to before using their way of knowing what they define as knowable. Both involve what critical theorist Ogawa calls a “rational perceiving of reality” with a rationality derived from the cultural context within which the knowledge system operates. That rationality is informed by assumptions and intents of the scientific tradition.

Western science is based on an assumption of objective reality and an objectification of nature which is made possible by deploying binary separations between nature and culture, mind and matter, physical and metaphysical. Care is taken to ensure that the reality of the material world of biology, chemistry and physics is viewed untainted by culture or metaphysics. In this world, nature is the sum of all natural resources that can be known, managed and exploited for human good through a process of demystification using the scientific method. 

Also read: Sea Spirit Science

Fisher science is driven by two primal motivations: Finding fish and staying alive. Every fisher that ventures out to fish must be a scientist. A good one returns home alive, and with fish if conditions are right. The test of adeptness with this science is a daily affair of living with, surviving and thriving from the sea. Where western science attempts to generate universally applicable knowledge about nature, fisher science uses current and historical place-based experiences to make sense of a hyper-locality. 

Contrary to western science’s binary worldview, fisher and other artisanal knowledge traditions are premised on a unitary view of the world where nature, culture, matter and spirit are inseparable and interrelated, and the purpose of making sense of the world – i.e. to find fish and stay alive – can only be realised when science and virtue come together.

As Vareethaiah Konstantine, author and historian of Tamil fisher traditions, so elegantly put it during one conversation, in many of the non-western artisanal science traditions, sense-making (அறிதல் – Aṟital) of the world is incomplete without virtue, morality and faith (அறம் – Aṟam).

Misinformed by half-baked notions of “rationality,” it is easy to dismiss non-western ways of knowing as superstition or cultural belief, or to be blind to the empirical rigour underpinning these traditions. Palayam Anna, for instance, has been maintaining a daily dairy of wind and sea conditions since August 2018, with detailed observations of field conditions for days with out-of-the-ordinary phenomena. Every morning, I receive a short update via WhatsApp with photographs and videos. Every evening, a WhatsApp note arrives containing details of direction and strength of nearshore and midsea currents, winds and rains (if any), sea condition (calm, moderate/normal, rough). Wind and rain details are recorded three times a day – at 5.30 am, 12 noon and 10 pm But Palayam, like other fishers, watches the sea and the winds all the time. When the sea acts up, like it did over the last 10 days, I receive multiple voice notes and written updates as the situation develops.

The Science of the Seas is a collaborative effort, involving the analyses of crowdsourced information gathered by fishers on beaches and boats. It is subject to intense peer scrutiny. Theories about the particular – say, a weather phenomenon and its implications, or the appearance or disappearance of a particular fish – are made in relation to the whole. Analyses that pass peer review are passed on across the community, and those that survive further review and rigours of practice are handed down through generations.

However, there’s more to the science than ‘data’. Palayam echoes this: “We read the waves, sense the winds, estimate the right moment to safely cross the surf zone and all that. All that is what you call ‘data.’ For data to become knowledge, and for us to survive and thrive in the lap of kadalamma (Mother Sea) requires us to do all that, then to do right by her and first to submit to her.” Science without Aṟam or knowledge without faith is pointless.

S. Palayam is a veteran hook-and-line fisher and fisher scientist. Nityanand Jayaraman is a writer, social activist and citizen science enthusiast.