Dawn has not fully broken and the sky is still grey. A few fishing trawlers are moored at the river ghat, their timbers wet. The raw smell of fresh shrimp hangs over thick ropes, damp nets and the sweat of the crews. Look inside a boat and you see heaps of red shrimp lying asleep in ice, stored in waist-deep holds and waiting to go abroad. Shrimp that were leaping in the waves of the Bay of Bengal only a day or two earlier will within days be served in a restaurant in Tokyo or Amsterdam.

Bangladesh's coastal waters are ideal for red shrimp, which thrive in the warm, salty water of the Bay of Bengal. The shrimp is now one of the country's important export products. Before it reaches a foreign plate it goes through a great deal of work: it is packed in ice on board, its head is removed and it is sorted, and only then does it set off for the international market.

This "red gold" that travels abroad on ice brings in foreign currency, but behind it lies a long history of sweat, salt water and silent struggle.

Thousands of fishermen work on trawlers and boats in Bangladesh's deep sea. Day after day they fight waves and storms to cast their nets, and in those nets comes the red shrimp. The fishermen usually go out to deep water and set trawl nets. When the nets are hauled in after hours of work, the bright red shrimp stand out among the silver fish.

Red shrimp lie under ice in blue plastic crates. From here begins a long journey by truck, cold store and ship. (Photo: Khairul Bashar Ashik)

The most important task at this stage is removing the heads, since only the body is kept for export. This is often done on the boat and sometimes after landing. Most of the shrimp are lifted off the boats and tipped out on open ground, where sorting begins as soon as they land. The shrimp are separated by size, colour and freshness. Hundreds of workers spend hour after hour there cutting off heads, peeling and washing. Once the heads are off, the shrimp are covered in ice again, as if the cold could stop time.

Why remove the head? If shrimp are not put on ice within the first 4 to 6 hours after catching, they begin to rot. So fishermen keep them at sea in large plastic crates and sacks with ice, and remove the heads as quickly as possible, because enzymes in the head speed up spoilage. With the head on, the export weight is higher but the quality falls, and "headless shrimp" is in greater demand on the international market. As a result about 30 to 40 per cent of the weight of the catch (head and shell) is discarded locally. In short, the heads are removed to keep the shrimp up to export standard.

The headless shrimp are packed with ice in airtight cork-sheet boxes and sent to large aratdars, or wholesalers. The wholesalers send them in cold rooms or refrigerated trucks to processing factories in Khulna, Bagerhat, Chattogram and Cox's Bazar, where they are washed and graded. Exporters in Dhaka and Chattogram buy from these wholesalers. After processing, the shrimp are loaded into refrigerated containers and go abroad by sea or air.

Starting from a boat in the Bay of Bengal, the shrimp ends up in supermarkets and restaurants in Europe or East Asia. Bangladesh exports on average 500 to 600 million US dollars' worth of shrimp and frozen fish a year, and red shrimp is an important sub-sector of that. The country catches about 7 to 8 lakh tonnes of marine fish and shrimp a year, a large part of it from the deep sea. Red shrimp is a relatively small share of this but has a high market value. In the European Union, Japan, China, South Korea, the Middle East and several other markets, Bangladeshi red shrimp sells for between Tk 2,500 and Tk 6,000 a kg in Bangladeshi money.

A worker pours ice into the hold below deck. This dark space is the boat's temporary cold storage. (Photo: Khairul Bashar Ashik)

Red shrimp is a quiet driving force of Bangladesh's coastal economy, and the industry rests on coastal workers. About 6 to 7 lakh fishermen are directly engaged in fishing at sea, and another 15 to 20 lakh people work in shrimp processing, transport, ice factories and exports. Fishermen, aratdars, workers and transport crews together make up a vast yet silent supply route.

The first and hardest stage of this journey is crossed by Bangladesh's fishermen, standing among ice, rope and sea. These people working with nets and water are the first link in a global supply chain. But the larger part of the shrimp's price does not go to those who climb down into the dark holds and work standing in ice. At sea, fishermen get on average Tk 300 to Tk 400 a kg.

They catch shrimp amid risky voyages, uncertain income and hard labour. Abu Saleh Mia, a fisherman from Chattogram, said: "Red shrimp is like gold to us. A good day means an income of several thousand taka. But the road to bringing this 'gold' home is not easy at all. Rough waves, storms and uncertainty are fishermen's constant companions."

The trade still faces some problems and risks. Md Abul Bashar, senior programme officer at the SAARC Agriculture Centre, said Bangladesh's red shrimp is no longer confined to the depths of the sea; it has kept its reputation for taste and quality on the international market. Still, transport problems, banking and quality control are challenges that threaten its long-term development. The future of the industry, he said, will depend on higher production, quality control, modern technology and alignment with the international market.

Red shrimp is not just a seafood story but a story of labour, global trade and the lives of Bangladesh's coastal people. Thousands of lives are bound up in every stage of the supply chain. Fishermen board their boats every dawn despite storms, trawler accidents and the dangers of the deep sea, because red shrimp comes back to their households as rice on the table: not directly, but after passing through many hands.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.