India, Feb. 13 -- It was early on the morning of Thursday, January 22, when the sea at Kochuthoppu, on the southern edge of Thiruvananthapuram, looked no different from any other winter morning. The sky was pale, the waves were gentle, and the fishers were pulling in their shore-seine nets in silence, half awake, thinking only of the day's catch and the long hours ahead. The beach smelled of wet rope and salt, and the usual cries of seagulls floated over the water. Nothing suggested that this would become a morning that many of them would remember for years.

Then the net refused to move.

There was a strange weight beneath the water, a deep resistance that did not feel like fish. As the men leaned back and pulled harder, the rope cut int...