Efforts by a tug for the past two days to salvage the huge dredger that got beached on the Mundakkal Papanasham beach in the city has drawn a blank. However, the site is being besieged by visitors, many of whom even board the vessel.
Vendors have already taken over the location to cater to the visiting crowd. Regulars to Kollam beach now prefer Papanasham beach, a few hundred metres to the south. Selfies, with the dredger in the backdrop, are an added attraction.
Traffic held up
Because of crowd surge, traffic gets held up in the area, a course of the newly laid coastal road from Kollam to Paravur. People enjoy seeing huge waves battering the vessel’s hull. The huge waves sometimes deposit colourful marine creatures such as butterfly fish on the deck. Visitors wait aboard to grab such fish as trophy. Most of the fish die soon afterwards though visitors manage to take home some of the fish alive and keep them in sea water. The fish survive for a day or two. The nearby Tangasseri breakwater and the Thirumullavaram reef are natural habitats of ornamental tropical marine life.
But the beached dredger is also creating a headache for the authorities and people living nearby mainly because of fears that the vessel is triggering unusual sea erosion activity in the area. The dredger, Hansita, caught in a legal tangle with the Kollam port authorities, was anchored three nautical miles off the coast since November 2013. During a storm last month the vessel got loose from its moorings and was swept to the beach.
