Hilsa scarce in Barishal at the start of the season as Port Road prices soar

Hilsa were scarce in Barishal at the very start of the 2026 season, and the few fish that reached the market sold at prices that put the national fish out of reach of low-income buyers. On the morning of Tuesday 2 June 2026, about 60 maunds of hilsa had arrived at the Port Road wholesale fish landing centre in Barishal city, Jagonews24 reported that day, when a thousand maunds would be expected at that time of year. Traders said short supply had pushed prices up, some buyers accused traders of acting together to raise them, and fishers on the Kirtankhola river said they were getting by on loans.

According to the Jagonews24 report, hilsa of about one kilogram were selling at Port Road for Tk 2,500 to Tk 3,000 a kilogram that morning. Fish of 700 to 900 grams, which traders call the LC size, sold for Tk 2,050 to Tk 2,400 a kilogram, 500-gram fish for Tk 1,800 a kilogram, and 400-gram fish for Tk 1,500 to Tk 1,600 a kilogram.

Traders told the paper that the arats, the wholesale depots of the market, should have been full of hilsa at that time, yet there was no sign of the fish in the rivers, and prices were high because supply was short.

Nasir Uddin, proprietor of Lia Arat at the Port Road hilsa market, said there was very little hilsa in the rivers. For the previous few days only 50 to 60 maunds had reached the market, he said, when 200 to 300 maunds should have been coming in at that time.

Md Robin, manager of M/s Dulal Fish, said: "Even a year or two ago, 2,000 maunds of hilsa were traded at the Port Road arats by the end of the day in the peak season. Now the picture is completely reversed. For several days no more than 60 maunds have come in. So although there is demand, prices are rising because there is not enough hilsa."

Yar Hossain Shikder, former finance secretary of the Port Road fish landing centre owners' association, told Jagonews24 that in the peak season 1,000 to 1,200 maunds of hilsa used to arrive every day at the market's 170 arats, and sales ran to crores of taka. At the time of the report, he said, daily sales came to only Tk 25 lakh to Tk 30 lakh.

Buyers told Jagonews24 that because hilsa cost more than before, they were going home with other fish.

Shahin, who had come to buy fish at the Port Road wholesale market, said: "Hilsa that used to cost Tk 1,400 to 1,600 a kg now costs Tk 2,200 to 2,500. Prices have been raised by a syndicate on the pretext of short supply. These are fish from our own rivers and sea. I see no reason for such high prices." The claim of a syndicate was his. The traders quoted in the same report put the prices down to the short supply of fish, and the report carried no direct reply to the allegation.

Another buyer, Sohel Rana, said he had come to the wholesale market instead of his local market in the hope of paying a little less, but found the fish selling at the same high prices as in the retail market. He said he had still bought four small hilsa of 700 to 800 grams for Tk 3,000.

Rasel Sikder said he had come to buy hilsa but could not manage the price, so he bought pangas instead. A kilogram of 500-gram hilsa cost Tk 1,800, he said, when it used to cost Tk 800 to Tk 900. Pangas had also become dearer: he paid Tk 280 for fish that used to cost between Tk 150 and Tk 200.

The fishers had their own troubles. Aslam, who was out to catch hilsa, said: "There is no hilsa and no jatka either. For now I am getting by on loans." He said he hoped fish would be caught once it rained. Sagir, a fisher on the Kirtankhola, said: "I went out on the river obeying the ban, yet there is no hilsa in sight. If this goes on, I will have to sell my net to pay off my debts."

Asked about the shortage at the start of the season, Barishal fisheries officer Dr Hadiuzzaman told Jagonews24: "Although the hilsa season starts in June, the peak season begins in July. As soon as it rains, hilsa will come from the sea into the rivers. This year, because of strict monitoring of the sixth sanctuary in March and April, the killing of jatka fell. To protect jatka, the ban continues in the rivers until 30 June and at sea until 11 June. But there is no bar on catching hilsa."

Researchers quoted in the report said that about 90 percent of the jatka in the sanctuaries had reached the sea that year, and that the benefit might show towards the end of the season, in September and October. Fishing at sea was banned until 11 June, they noted, and if the ban lasted a little longer the jatka would grow bigger and the full benefit could be gained.

Mohammad Nasir Uddin, deputy project director of the Hilsa Resource Development and Management project, said shoals of chapila-sized jatka, the young hilsa, had gone to sea by the end of April that year, whereas the year before the shoals went to sea in the first week of May. Because of Department of Fisheries monitoring, he said, few of these small jatka could be caught with pai nets, and they reached the sea after growing to 5 to 6 inches in the rivers. The project's estimate was that 90 percent of the jatka had gone to sea compared with the year before, and what was needed now was to let them grow in the sea.

Barishal lies at the heart of the country's hilsa coast. According to Banglapedia, the old Bakerganj district was established in 1797 and later renamed Barisal; Barisal division was formed on 1 January 1993, and the town's municipality became a city corporation in 2000. The division is bounded by the Bay of Bengal to the south, and its main rivers include the Tentulia, Kirtankhola, Bishkhali, Meghna and the Shahbazpur Channel.

The Kirtankhola, the river of the fishers quoted in the report, flows past Barishal town and is also known as the Barisal river. Banglapedia describes it as an offshoot of the Arial Khan that starts near Sayestabad in Barisal district; its total length is about 160 km. In the British period it was about a kilometre wide, but char formation has reduced its width to about half a kilometre, and its depth, discharge and flow have also fallen.

Port Road's arats have featured in reports of hilsa shortages before. On 10 April 2024, The Daily Star's Bangla edition reported that the price of a maund of hilsa at the Port Road wholesale market had passed Tk 1 lakh ahead of Eid and Pohela Boishakh. A trader there said 100 to 150 maunds were arriving a day when demand was for a thousand maunds, because fishing was banned in the sanctuaries; large, sorted fish were being sent to Dhaka, Narayanganj and other cities. The Barishal district fisheries office said fishing was then banned from 1 March to 30 April in five sanctuaries in Barishal and other districts.

On 27 September 2024 the same paper reported that at Port Road, hilsa of 600 to 900 grams were selling at an average of Tk 1,700 a kilogram, one-kilogram fish at Tk 1,900, and larger fish at Tk 2,000.

The previous season had also started badly. The Daily Star's Bangla edition reported on 21 August 2025 that Barishal division, the country's largest hilsa-harvesting area, landed 14,496 tonnes in June 2025, down from 21,817 tonnes, and 10,876 tonnes in July, against 15,470 tonnes the year before. Citing the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, it said July 2025 rainfall was 23.5 percent above the normal average, with 878 mm recorded in Barishal division, and that the active monsoon kept fishers from going to sea. According to the Barishal fisheries office, the movement of hilsa was obstructed at at least 20 places on the Meghna, Payra, Baleshwar, Bishkhali, Andharmanik, Tentulia, Sugandha and Gajaria rivers.

The hilsa, ilish in Bengali, is the national fish of Bangladesh. Banglapedia describes it as a member of the genus Tenualosa in the herring family Clupeidae, with a strongly compressed, metallic silver body. It may reach 60 cm, though fish of 35 to 40 cm are the most common, and a large hilsa weighs about 2.5 kg. Females grow faster and are usually larger than males, and the fish reaches maturity in one to two years. It feeds mainly on plankton.

The hilsa is anadromous: adults migrate from the sea up the rivers to breed in fresh water, the eggs float free, and the young grow in the river channels before descending to the sea to feed and grow, returning later as breeding adults. A large female may produce up to 2 million eggs. Banglapedia notes a minor spawning season in February and March and a major one in September and October, and says fishers catch migrating adults from May to October and juveniles from February to May.

Jatka is the name for the young hilsa. Under the rules in force in 2026, any hilsa smaller than 25 centimetres counts as jatka, and catching, transporting, selling or storing it was banned from 1 November 2025 to 30 June 2026. Anisur Rahman, a former chief scientific officer of the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) at Chandpur, told Prothom Alo in April 2025 that it takes more than a year for a jatka to become a large hilsa of at least 500 grams, so a fisher has to wait at least two years for big fish; to get them, he said, illegal nets must be destroyed and the sanctuaries fully protected.

A BFRI study reported by Prothom Alo on 13 April 2026 said that a jatka that survives a year grows to about 11.81 inches, and a hilsa that lives five to seven years can reach 22.68 inches. The study found that the hilsa's diet includes 27 species of plant plankton and 12 species of animal plankton, and that plankton in the Meghna had fallen by 68 percent, largely because of river pollution.

The fish caught were also getting smaller. At a seminar in Dhaka on 8 April 2026 during Jatka Conservation Week, BFRI senior scientific officer Mohammad Ashraful Alam presented figures showing the average length of hilsa caught at 35.7 cm in 2019-20 and 2020-21, 37 cm in 2021-22 and 37.2 cm in 2022-23, then falling to 36.6 cm in 2023-24 and 34.7 cm in 2024-25, The Daily Star's Bangla edition reported. The largest hilsa were found off Cox's Bazar, averaging 38.5 cm and 780 grams, and the smallest in the Rajshahi area, averaging 29 cm and 340 grams. He blamed overfishing, the killing of jatka, environmental change, poorer water quality and a lack of food in the rivers.

The shortage at Port Road came after two years of falling national catches. Prothom Alo reported on 13 April 2025, citing the Department of Fisheries (DoF), that the hilsa catch had risen steadily for a decade to 5 lakh 71 thousand tonnes in 2022-23 and then fallen to 5 lakh 29 thousand tonnes in 2023-24, a drop of 42,000 tonnes. The catch had been 2 lakh 20 thousand 593 tonnes in 2001 and did not rise above about 3.25 lakh tonnes until 2013; according to the Barishal divisional fisheries office, it rose from 5 lakh 17 thousand tonnes in 2017-18 to 5 lakh 66 thousand tonnes in 2021-22.

BFRI scientific officer Mohammad Abu Kawsar Didar told the paper that bad weather had kept fishers off the rivers and sea, that siltation had become severe at the hilsa's three main migration routes, the Meghna-Tentulia, the Payra-Bishkhali and the Sundarbans area, and that Bangladesh had exceeded the limit of what could be caught. Mir Mohammad Ali, an assistant professor of aquaculture at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, pointed to shallower rivers, pollution and coal-fired power plants built at the Rabnabad and Payra-Bishkhali-Baleshwar estuaries.

By April 2026 the decline had continued. Prothom Alo reported on 13 April 2026 that the catch stood at 5 lakh tonnes in 2024-25, 71,000 tonnes less than in 2022-23. When the Hilsa Resource Development and Management project began in July 2021, annual output was 5 lakh 50 thousand tonnes.

Earlier official figures show how much the fish matters. Citing the Fisheries Statistical Report of Bangladesh 2016-17, the Dhaka Tribune reported in June 2018 that the country produced 496,417 tonnes of hilsa a year, about 65 percent of it from marine sources; that hilsa made up around 12 percent of the country's fish production and around 1 percent of GDP; and that around half a million fishers depended directly on it, and another two million indirectly.

Estimated egg production, by contrast, had risen over the decade. The BFRI presentation of April 2026 put estimated hilsa egg production at 5 lakh 99 thousand 720 kg in 2015, rising to 7 lakh 86 thousand 314 kg in 2021, 8 lakh 5 thousand 515 kg in 2023 and 8 lakh 11 thousand 711 kg in 2024. For 2025 one estimate gave 8 lakh 84 thousand 802 kg while another put it at 7 lakh 91 thousand 564 kg, a mixed picture the scientists linked to the falling number of large breeding fish.

Three sets of restrictions applied when the Barishal report was written. The first was the jatka ban. The Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock barred catching, transporting, marketing, selling or storing hilsa smaller than 25 centimetres from 1 November 2025 to 30 June 2026, Bonik Barta reported at the start of the ban. Violations were punishable under the Protection and Conservation of Fish (Amendment) Ordinance 2025 and the Protection and Conservation of Fish Rules 1985, with up to two years in prison, a fine of up to Tk 5 lakh, or both, and the DoF was to enforce the ban with district and upazila administrations, the Navy, Coast Guard, river police and RAB. Before it, from 4 to 25 October 2025, the government ran the Hilsa Conservation Campaign to protect brood hilsa in the peak breeding season.

The second was the sea ban. A 58-day ban on all fishing in Bangladesh's waters of the Bay of Bengal came into effect at midnight on 14 April 2026 and was to run until midnight on 11 June, the Dhaka Tribune reported on 15 April 2026. In Bhola district alone, 63,954 registered fishers in seven upazilas were to receive 77 kg of VGF rice each at the start of the ban. The 2025 ban had run over the same dates, from 15 April to 11 June.

The third was the sanctuaries. Fishing is banned in March and April in all hilsa sanctuaries except the Andharmanik river, where the ban falls in November to January, the Dhaka Tribune reported in June 2018. The sanctuaries include 100 km of the Meghna from Shatnol in Chandpur to Char Alexander in Laxmipur, 90 km of the Shahbazpur Channel and 100 km of the Tentulia in Bhola, 40 km of the Andharmanik in Patuakhali, and 20 km of the lower Padma in Shariatpur district. The sixth sanctuary, declared in 2018, is an 83 km stretch of the Meghna from Hizla to Mehendiganj in Barishal district; Prothom Alo described it in 2022 as 82 km covering Hizla, Mehendiganj and Barishal Sadar upazilas.

At sea, six areas including Nijhum Dwip and the Naf river had been declared sanctuaries, the director of the Hilsa Resource Development and Management project told Prothom Alo in April 2026, though he said they had not been effectively protected.

The project whose deputy director spoke to Jagonews24 is run by the Department of Fisheries. According to Prothom Alo's report of 13 April 2026, the five-year, Tk 229 crore project began in July 2021 and was due to end two months after that report. Its aims were to enforce the fish conservation law to protect brood hilsa and jatka, raise production through sanctuary management, create alternative work for 30,000 fisher families who catch jatka and brood hilsa, distribute nets to fishers and build public awareness. The paper noted that there were allegations of irregularities in the support given to fisher families.

Molla Emdadullah, the project director, told Prothom Alo that production had risen after jatka conservation, alternative employment and food aid for fishers began, but that conservation work had been centred on the rivers with no activity at sea. He said hilsa were being overfished at sea, while the rivers were losing depth and the fish's migration routes had been damaged. According to the DoF, 28,000 artisanal trawlers, which fish at depths of under 40 metres, and 268 industrial trawlers fish in the sea.

In August 2025 the same director told The Daily Star's Bangla edition that hilsa need certain conditions to enter the rivers: fresh water, current, a depth of at least 10 metres and a width of at least 500 metres. Where they do not find them, he said, they move elsewhere, even across the border to Myanmar or India.

Barishal's prices were part of a national rise. Prothom Alo reported on 13 April 2026 that, according to the Department of Agricultural Marketing, hilsa of 400 to 900 grams were selling in Dhaka's markets at Tk 1,500 to Tk 3,000 a kilogram, 50 percent more than a year earlier. In 2020 the average price over the year had been Tk 701 a kilogram, and a large pangas then sold at Tk 250 a kilogram.

In August 2025 The Daily Star's Bangla edition reported that small hilsa in Dhaka were selling at Tk 1,450 to Tk 1,600 a kilogram, medium fish at Tk 1,850 to Tk 2,000 and large fish at Tk 2,600 to Tk 3,200. Citing the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh, it said prices had risen by about 33 percent compared with 2023. The Consumers Association of Bangladesh, drawing on newspaper reports, put a kilogram of hilsa at Tk 417 in 2010 and Tk 789 in 2019, and said it had reached Tk 3,500 in 2025.

Photo: Rezowan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24 (2 June 2026), Prothom Alo (13 April 2025, 13 April 2026; English edition 1 March 2022), The Daily Star Bangla (10 April 2024, 27 September 2024, 21 August 2025, 9 April 2026), Dhaka Tribune (25 June 2018, 15 April 2026), Bonik Barta (November 2025), Banglapedia