As marine fishing resumes after a 65-day ban, poor fishers need govt support

Marine fishing resumed in the Bay on Friday after a 65-day ban. Fishermen are now hoping they will be able to catch fish as per their expectations. They are now busy preparing fishing nets and repairing trawlers at various ghats on the banks of the Karnaphuli in Chattogram. Fishing was banned in the Bay of Bengal from 19 May to 23 July, the spawning season, to help increase the breeding of fish. Banning fishing is not new and has proved to be a fruitful step to increase production.
As fishing was stopped for more than two months of the year, hilsa and other varieties of fish managed to breed in the sea and this is expected to benefit the country’s fisheries sector. Along with fishing in the sea, fishermen are hoping to catch big hilsa in the Padma and the Meghna. The fish in the sanctuaries of these two rivers have become quite large due to the ban on fishing for a long time. After a comparative analysis of past years, the sector leaders expect about six lakh tonnes of hilsa will be caught this year. According to the Department of Marine Fisheries, there are 298,595 registered fishermen and labourers, 30 commercial trawlers, 32,000 automatic fishing vessels, and 34,000 manual vessels all over the country.
Fishermen were given relief rice during the period of the fishing ban. However, it is alleged that the compensation did not reach all and the support was not adequate for the fisher households. When fishing in the sea was stopped, most fishers had to borrow money to run their families. It must be realised that when the fisher communities starve, survival becomes the top priority. We hope the government would extend adequate support to the deserving fisher households across the districts to help them resume fishing in full swing and boost production to meet the nation’s protein demands.