Fisherman S.K. Cruz has been facing hard times looking after his four-member family since the government opened a 103.5 megawatts wind power plant on the coast of the Gulf of Mannar in northern Sri Lanka four years ago.
Earlier, he used to take his plastic boat out five nautical miles to sea in the morning and return home with a decent catch by the evening. This is now a thing of the past.
Now, the 58-year-old father of two needs to travel at least 15 nautical miles and spend three times more on fuel to get a decent catch to put food on the table. He blames the noise from dozens of wind turbines for driving the once-rich fish stocks further away from the coastline, causing misery for thousands of local fishermen like him. “There’s no fish near the coast anymore,” Cruz told.