It was just after dawn and the fish market beneath this port city’s clock tower was humming. Fishermen shouldering baskets laden with the night’s catch tipped their Spanish mackerel, tuna and prawns onto the slick concrete floor for buyers. Sweaty men with clipboards and wads of cash leaned in close to inspect with crinkled noses, squinting eyes and prodding fingers.
“I’ll take this for 500 rupees a kilo,” nearly $5, one buyer said to an expectant fisherman, waving his chin in the direction of a large, glistening yellowfin tuna. “Can you get me more?”
Fishermen here certainly hope so. The end of the brutal 26-year war against the Tamil Tiger insurgency in Sri Lanka prompted the government to ease fishing restrictions on Trincomalee’s harbor, breathing new life into the region’s moribund fishing industry. Boats once moldering on shore now go on all-night runs for tuna, squid and lobster. Ghostly markets are coming back to life.
Trincomalee has one of the world’s deepest natural harbors, and its potential for fishing, shipping and tourism seems endless. It holds a bounty of fish, crab and prawns that could provide tens of millions of dollars in earnings. Whales spawn here and dolphins leap in the azure waters.
But the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, one of the world’s most brutal and enduring separatist groups, had a small but effective navy it used in suicide missions and to supply weapons to its fighters. Although the rebels were chased from this region in 2006, the bay has been largely off limits to development because of security concerns.
In the past month, the government has allowed fishermen to fish in 12-hour shifts here and has allowed fishing to resume in other previously restricted coastal areas.
Fishing is at the heart of the economic and cultural life of this region, indeed of much of coastal Sri Lanka, and its return is being celebrated in the north and east.
“When people here cannot fish they feel as if they are not living,” said T. T. R. de Silva, the top central government official here.
The rapid rebound of the fishing industry here mirrors a broader rebirth under way, one that gives people in Sri Lanka a tantalizing morsel of how prosperous postwar life could be.
In Sri Lanka, with its lush tea plantations, miles of pristine beaches, rolling farmland and deep water harbors, the economy is waiting to be unleashed, government officials and business leaders say. Nowhere is that truer than in the war-scarred east and north of the country.
In 1981 the Eastern Province accounted for 11 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. In 2006 it contributed only 4 percent, said Palitha T. B. Kohona, Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary, who has been trying to drum up investment in the formerly war-torn parts of the country.
“The potential here is just enormous,” he said. “There is nowhere to go but up.”
Sri Lanka’s economy has grown at a relatively good clip despite nearly three decades of war, averaging about 6 percent annually in the past four years.
But winning the war, which required an army of about 200,000 men and huge expenditures on arms, has left the government’s coffers almost empty. After weeks of wrangling, the International Monetary Fund has agreed to help Sri Lanka with a $2.6 billion line of credit, despite objections from some Western countries concerned about the government’s human rights record.
In the last weeks of the war thousands of Tamil civilians died in a narrow strip of land where they were stuck, along with Tamil Tiger fighters. The government says it did not intentionally attack civilians, but human rights organizations have called for an independent investigation. The government has vehemently opposed such an inquiry.
Here in Trincomalee, hopes for a large peace dividend are high.
“The war is over,” said D. H. Podimahathaya, a 43-year-old fisherman who has seen his income plummet because of restrictions on fishing in Trincomalee harbor. “Everyone suffered a lot. Now we need money.”
Mr. Podimahathaya’s family has been fishing for generations, and the restrictions hit them hard.
“Our whole family depends on fishing,” he said. “At some times we didn’t have anything to eat. But now the situation is improving.”
Muthumala Gunadasa, a wizened 57-year-old fisherman, said the war had forced three of his brothers to migrate to the south, despite the fact that the fishing here is much more lucrative.
“But now those who left are returning home,” he said. “Everyone wants to fish here.”
But the picture in Trincomalee is not exactly postcard perfect, said R. Rajarammohan, chairman of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. The seas may be more open, but strict security measures remain on land, like the roadblocks leading from the city to the capital, Colombo, where much of Trincomalee’s daily catch is headed.
“When goods and people cannot move freely, it is premature to talk about an economic turnaround,” Mr. Rajarammohan said. “If the war is over, are all of these measures really necessary?”
Indeed, the journey from Trincomalee to Colombo, just 160 miles, can take more than eight hours. Soldiers stop motorists more than a dozen times, and at one major checkpoint passengers must get out of their vehicles and have their cargo searched.
Government officials say that these precautions are necessary because Tamil rebels may remain hidden in the north and east. The rebels have used women and children as suicide bombers in the past, so almost anyone could be a suspect, Mr. de Silva said.
“We cannot be too careful,” he said. “The war only just ended.”
Fishermen here are glad to be back out on the water, but they say they are looking forward to the day when they can fish anytime they like. At the moment they can go out for only 12 hours at a time, and they can use only small outboard motors, which limits the size of their catch.
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