Purse seining is one of the most efficient and advanced commercial fishing methods. It is aimed mainly at catching dense, mobile school of pelagic fish and includes all elements of searching, hunting and capture. Purse seine nets was using mesh sizes ranging from 10 to 22 mm in the main body of the netting and was mainly for targeting anchovies, sardines and mackerels in the coastal waters. With the objective of targeting the under exploited large pelagic fishes in deeper waters, a purse seine net was designed with large mesh size (45 mm), so as to reduce fishing pressure in the coastal waters. Introduction of large mesh purse seines facilitated by CIFT has led to the revival of small mechanized purse seine fishery in Kerala

The traditional fishermen and the purse seiners were targeting small pelagic like anchovies, sardines and small mackerels in the costal waters. The purse seiners were also targeting the same resource in the coastal waters. There was severe competition and rifts between the tradition and mechanized purse seiners. With the introduction of large mesh purse seine, the fishermen could go to deeper and farther waters targeting large pelagic like tunas, seer fish, pomfrets and large mackerels thus reducing the competition and fishing pressure in the coastal waters.