The history of fishing in Negombo: from canoes to global seafood industry

Long before dawn, Lellama fish market on the southern end of Negombo lagoon’s Pitipana bridge is a hive of activity.

Inshore and offshore boats return through the lagoon entrance. Fish are unloaded and sorted for transport to markets around the island. Local restaurants and hotels prepare to receive the day’s fresh catch. 

Meanwhile, larger multi-day offshore boats have been harvesting tuna and other commercial species that are the bedrock of Sri Lanka’s seafood export industry. 

The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority describes Negombo’s economy as being based substantially on tourism and its centuries-old fishing industry. 

The city’s location at the mouth of the lagoon helps explain how and why the two developed alongside each other. (SLTDA⁠)

The lagoon that created a fishing town

Negombo Lagoon is a roughly 33-square-kilometre ecosystem for fish, prawns, crabs and other aquatic species that have supported fishing communities for generations. (Fisheries Ministry LK⁠)

Local fishermen developed an extensive knowledge of tides, seasons, currents and fish behaviour. Fishing methods included cast nets, drag nets, brush piles, hand lines and stake nets.

The Kattudel, or stake-seine fishery, is particularly significant. The Food and Agriculture Organization records deeds relating to Kattudel fishing rights in Negombo Lagoon dating back to 1721. The fishery operated through defined fishing locations and rights, with rules governing who could fish and when. (FAOHome⁠)

This shows that traditional fishing was not an informal activity in which everybody competed for a common resource, but a system of ownership, access and conflict resolution that evolved centuries before modern fisheries legislation.

The FAO has described the Negombo Lagoon as an example of community-based fisheries management, with fishing rights and regulations governing the use of stake nets near the lagoon entrance. (FAOHome⁠)

From the lagoon to the sea

While traditional sail-powered outrigger canoes can still be seen a few hundred metres off the beach, the technology changed dramatically during the twentieth century.

The introduction of engines, nylon nets, improved boats, ice and better transport allowed fishermen to travel farther and return with larger catches. 

Fishing consequently evolved from a predominantly local subsistence and small-scale commercial activity into a much more sophisticated industry.

Boatbuilding

FAO documentation on Sri Lanka’s development of multi-day fishing records that glass fibre fishing boats began to be constructed in Negombo during the early 1960s. 

And as demand for larger offshore vessels increased from the mid-1980s, these boatyards expanded their capacity, eventually constructing vessels of more than 18 metres. (FAOHome⁠)

So while small traditional craft might leave before dawn, fish relatively close to shore and return the same day, multi-day boats can remain at sea for days or weeks.

The three faces of Negombo fishing

Think of Negombo’s fishing industry as three overlapping economies.

First, traditional lagoon fishing.

This remains closely connected with the communities living around the lagoon and provides fish, prawns and crabs for local consumption.

Second, coastal and one-day fishing.

Small and medium-sized boats operate relatively close to shore and return with fresh catches that can enter Negombo’s fish markets, homes, restaurants and hotels.

Third, multi-day offshore fishing.

Larger vessels travel much farther from the coast, remaining at sea for extended periods. Their catches can supply wholesale markets throughout Sri Lanka and, particularly in the case of species such as tuna, enter export supply chains.

Thus the fish served at a local restaurant may have been landed only hours earlier by a coastal fisherman.

But a tuna destined for a much larger national or international commercial food chain will have been landed after a prolonged offshore trip.

Both are products of Negombo’s fishing economy, but they represent very different scales of operation.

Fishing, Catholicism and ‘Little Rome’

Fishing also helps explain one of the most distinctive features of Negombo society: its strong Roman Catholic identity.

Negombo became known as Sri Lanka’s ‘Little Rome’ because of the historical strength of Catholicism in the city. The relationship between Catholicism and the fishing communities, however, goes considerably deeper than religious affiliation.

Historically, the parish church could function as a centre of community organisation, arbitration and social authority.

The relationship is particularly well documented in the Kattudel fishery.

FAO research records that the Kattudel fishermen’s association was guided and supervised by the Catholic Church. Disputes concerning the fishery could involve both government fisheries authorities and the local church, while fishermen traditionally contributed part of the proceeds to the Church. (FAOHome⁠)

Academic research published in Marine Policy describes the Padu system governing the stake-net fishery as a nested form of community fisheries governance. 

It specifically identifies the Roman Catholic Church as an important mechanism linking local fishing institutions with higher levels of authority. (ScienceDirect⁠)

This provides an important insight into Negombo’s history.

The Church was not merely an institution to which fishermen went on Sunday. It could form part of the machinery through which a fishing community organised itself.

When fishing meets tourism

From the late 1960s onwards, the beaches north of the lagoon became increasingly important for tourism and hotel development. But Negombo’s fishing community had traditionally used the same coastal spaces for boats, nets, fish processing and other activities.

A contemporary account published through the FAO’s Bay of Bengal programme described the resulting tension: the tourist industry wanted clean, uncluttered beaches, while fishermen depended upon those same beaches as working spaces. (FAOHome⁠)

The conflict illustrates an enduring paradox.

Negombo’s tourism industry benefits enormously from its association with fishing. Visitors want to see colourful boats, fishermen returning with their catch, fish markets and the distinctive coastal culture.

Yet a functioning fishing industry is not always visually compatible with the sanitised beachfront environment demanded by modern tourism.

The fishing community has consequently been pushed into particular areas, including Kuttiduwa and Lellama, while hotels and tourist infrastructure have occupied other sections of the coast. (FAOHome⁠)

Today, however, the two industries are also economically complementary.

The seafood caught by Negombo’s fishermen can end up on the tables of the city’s restaurants and hotels. For visitors, eating freshly caught local fish or visiting a fish market provides an immediate connection with a working culture that predates the tourist industry by centuries.

The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority itself promotes watching fishing boats return and visiting fish markets as part of the Negombo visitor experience. (SLTDA⁠)

From local markets to the export economy

The development of multi-day fishing transformed the economic geography of Negombo’s fisheries.

Fish no longer had to be sold within sight of the boat that caught it.

Ice, refrigerated transport, improved roads, processing facilities and larger vessels enabled catches to move rapidly into markets throughout the island.

The development of multi-day vessels was particularly important for Sri Lanka’s tuna industry. FAO records the growth of the offshore fleet and the involvement of several Negombo boatyards in constructing increasingly large fishing vessels. (FAOHome⁠)

This transformation continues today.

According to the Ministry of Fisheries’ 2024 statistics, Sri Lanka had 4,869 operating multi-day offshore vessels within a total marine fishing fleet of 49,271 vessels. Marine fish production was 308,430 tonnes, while fish and seafood exports generated approximately US$285 million. (Fisheries Ministry LK⁠)

Negombo therefore participates in two very different seafood economies. One is intensely local: fisherman, landing site, market, restaurant and consumer. The other is international: fishing vessel, landing, processing, distribution and overseas buyer.

The fishing community as a political force

Fishing has also given Negombo’s coastal communities political importance.

This should not be understood as a simple case of fishermen “controlling” local politics. Rather, the historical record shows that organised fisherfolk can become a formidable political constituency when their livelihoods are threatened.

A particularly revealing example occurred in the 1990s.

The FAO records that Negombo fisherfolk organised themselves around environmental and livelihood concerns and demonstrated their political strength by opposing a proposed harbour development project. 

The project, which had government backing and Asian Development Bank financing, was ultimately halted after fisherfolk mobilisation. The FAO explicitly describes the community’s emergence as a political ‘block vote’. (FAOHome⁠)

That episode is significant because it demonstrates the political value of a highly organised occupational community.

Fishing families have common economic interests. They live in concentrated coastal communities. They share churches and community institutions. They depend upon the same lagoon and fishing grounds.

Those factors can turn a dispersed group of individual fishermen into a politically significant constituency.

There are more recent examples of collective pressure. Research and FAO material document fisherfolk mobilisation over coastal and environmental issues, including opposition to developments perceived as threatening fishing livelihoods. (FAOHome⁠)

The Church and political influence

The relationship between the Church and fishing communities has consequently had a political dimension as well as a religious one.

Historically, priests could mediate disputes and communicate community concerns to government authorities. Modern academic research describes the Catholic Church as an important organisational and mediating institution along Sri Lanka’s western fishing coast. (Cambridge University Press⁠)

But this relationship should not be romanticised.

Contemporary research also documents disagreements between fishermen, priests, Church leaders, environmental activists and political authorities over major coastal developments. 

The Church has sometimes supported fishing communities and sometimes acted as a mediator between them and the state or developers. (Cambridge University Press⁠)

That complexity is important. It shows that the relationship between fishing, Catholicism and politics is not a permanent alliance but an evolving network of interests.

The future: protecting the resource that built Negombo

Negombo’s fishing history ultimately comes back to the lagoon and the sea.

The Ministry of Fisheries continues to identify Negombo Lagoon as a fisheries resource, while current government programmes include measures to protect and manage the lagoon. (Fisheries Ministry LK⁠)

The pressures are considerable.

Urbanisation, pollution, sedimentation, coastal development, habitat degradation, changing fishing technology and pressure on marine stocks all affect the future of the industry.

There is also a modern technical problem: catching fish is only half the battle. Keeping them in good condition is crucial to their value.

FAO has identified substantial post-harvest losses in Sri Lanka’s multi-day fisheries and has been working with the government to introduce improved cooling systems and more efficient vessels, particularly for fish destined for higher-value domestic and export markets. (FAOHome⁠)

The history of Negombo fishing is therefore not simply a story about the survival of an ancient occupation. It is a story of adaptation.

Traditional lagoon fishermen developed sophisticated systems of managing access to their waters. Small coastal boats subsequently became motorised. 

Negombo developed boatyards capable of constructing large offshore vessels. Fish that was once consumed close to the place where it was caught can now travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres.

And the fishing community has repeatedly demonstrated that it is capable of adapting politically as well as technologically.

For the visitor staying in Negombo today, a plate of freshly caught fish in a hotel restaurant may be a simple holiday meal.

But behind it lies a much longer story: of lagoon and ocean, fishermen and merchants, the Catholic Church and community institutions, traditional boats and modern multi-day vessels, local restaurants and international seafood markets.