The government's 22-day ban to protect roe-laden hilsa has ended, and fishers went out as soon as it lifted at midnight on 25 October. But in the Meghna and Tetulia rivers in Bhola their nets are still bringing up shoals of hilsa full of roe, most of them large mother fish, the fishers say.

According to the fishers, these mother hilsa would have released their eggs within three or four days, but were caught before they could spawn. Between 80 and 90 per cent of the hilsa they catch each day carry roe, and in no previous year have they netted so many roe-laden fish after the ban. They therefore consider this year's 22-day ban a failure.

Angry fishers and wholesalers on the Meghna and Tetulia said no wholesaler, trader or fisher in Bhola is ever consulted on the timing of the ban, and that this year, too, the dates were fixed without their views. On the other hand, a fisheries scientist at WorldFish Bangladesh says far more hilsa would have spawned had the ban started on 17 October this year.

Md Lokman Hossain Majhi, of Ward 5 in Rajapur union of Bhola Sadar upazila, who fishes the Meghna at Tulatuli, said that from 4am to 11am on Thursday he netted 11 large hilsa and eight jhakta. Only three of the 11 had released their eggs; the rest had bellies full of roe.

Md Hanif Majhi, of Tulatuli village, said he caught 30 hilsa of various sizes between morning and evening. Only four had spawned; all the rest had roe. He added that when he took two hilsa out of the net by hand, roe was dropping from them.

Fisherman Md Abul Kashem, who has supported his family by fishing the Meghna for 35 years, said that every year after the ban he catches many spent hilsa (known locally as "pair"). This year, in three or four days, he has caught only about five.

Md Amir Hossain Majhi said that although the government ban had succeeded every year, this year he was finding far more roe-laden hilsa and very few spent fish. "We fishers believe this year's 22-day drive has failed," he said.

Md Manju Islam, a fish trader at Tulatuli ghat, said most of the hilsa sold in retail and wholesale markets across the country, or exported, is caught in the Meghna and Tetulia in Bhola, yet no one in Bhola is consulted on the timing of the ban. Because the right time was not chosen, he said, there was a shortage of hilsa in the rivers during the peak season this year, and for the same reason fishers are now catching plenty of mother hilsa even after the ban. Had traders and fishers been consulted, this would not have happened.

Dr Md Jalilur Rahman, a fisheries scientist at WorldFish Bangladesh, told Jago News that at most 20 per cent of mother hilsa in the Meghna had spawned this year, far fewer than in other years. Had the 22-day ban been set from 16 or 17 October to 4 November, he said, spawning would have increased greatly.

Dr Anisur Rahman, chief scientific officer and hilsa researcher at the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute's riverine centre in Chandpur, told Jago News that research on how much the mother hilsa spawned in the Meghna this year is still under way, and a final figure will be available in the first week of November.

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