Fishing in the Bay rises

Although the Bay of Bengal has seen an overall increase in fishing activities, there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in fishing zones, leaving nearly half of the sea territory unexplored.

The Department of Marine Fisheries (MFD) reported that 681,000 tonnes of fish were harvested from the Bay of Bengal in FY21, and up until this point, preliminary data that MFD had received indicated that the figure was over 700,000 tonnes in FY22.

This fish has been caught at a maximum depth of 80 meters in the sea, which is up to a maximum distance of 170 km from the coast. But the sea boundary of Bangladesh extends up to 320 km from the coast.

MFD Director Dr Sharif Uddin said, “Every year we expect a maximum growth of 5 per cent in fish harvest from the Bay of Bengal. However, growth in the last financial year was 2-3 per cent.”

“Catch data from 250 industrial trawlers and about 30,000 mechanised boats has been collected for this calculation,” he added.

Of these, fixed data on the fish caught by trawlers, which account for only 20 per cent of the total marine catch in the country, is available, but the amount of fish caught by mechanised vessels is based on estimates.

Industrial trawlers caught 137,000 tonnes of fish in FY22, compared to 119,000 tonnes in FY21. These trawlers usually fish at depths of 40-80m, with a maximum distance of 170km from the coast. Sometimes trawlers with sophisticated fishing gear catch fish at a depth of 80-120m.

Fishing at greater depths would require a much larger investment in vessels and equipment, and since there is no assurance that this investment will be profitable, there is less interest in deep sea fishing, said Md Shajalal, managing director of Blue Harbor Fisheries Ltd.

The various steps taken by the government have increased the availability of fish in the sea, and we follow the government directives on fishing, he said, adding that, at present, the trawlers catch fish in the middle depths of the sea because bottom fishing is discouraged.

In order to increase the availability of fish in the sea, the government has taken a lot of initiatives, including the 65-day fishing ban during the spawning season between May and July and the 22-day fishing ban during the hilsa breeding season between October and November.

Although government measures have been found to be effective in increasing fish in the Bay of Bengal, several efforts by the government and private sectors to increase deep sea fish have not been successful yet.

M Shahadat Hossain, professor of Marine Science Institute at Chittagong University, said that our sea territory in the Bay of Bengal is divided into five zones, out of which only two are active fishing zones.

“The farthest two are treated as non-fishing zones, and the middle zone is lightly fished,” he added.

He also mentioned that to increase the amount of fish, fishing should be done in unexploited areas, and for that, there is a need to increase the capacity.

Of the amount of fish produced annually in Bangladesh, one-fifth of it is extracted from the sea. Several projects funded by the World Bank are currently under implementation to increase the fishing capacity of the sea.