Hilsa scarce in Bhola's rivers after ban; officials and researchers cite climate change

In the second week of May 2026, fishers in Bhola district were returning from the Meghna and Tetulia rivers with almost no hilsa, even though the rains had begun. Jagonews24 reported on 12 May 2026 that the shortage had left the district's fishing community, which it put at about 3 lakh people, in hardship, and that buyers in Bhola's markets were going home without the fish. Bhola's district fisheries officer and a hilsa researcher at the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) told the paper they saw the scarcity as an effect of climate change.

According to the report, more than 3 lakh fishers in Bhola's seven upazilas make their living catching hilsa and other fish in the Meghna and the Tetulia, and 1,67,970 of them are registered with the government. They went back to the rivers on 1 May, when a two-month government ban on all fishing in the district's hilsa sanctuaries ended, but most nets came up without hilsa.

Jagonews24 spoke to fishers in several parts of Bhola Sadar upazila: Kathir Matha in Kachia union, Tulatuli in Dhania union, Bholar Khal in Shibpur union and Hajir Hat in Bheduria union.

Md Syed Majhi and Md Monir Hossain Majhi of Kathir Matha village said the two of them took a boat onto the Meghna at Tulatuli and cast their net twice between morning and afternoon, for about five to six hours in all. They did not catch a single hilsa. They did catch several bata and chhura, also called tapsi, of different sizes, which they sold at the ghat for only Tk 500. The two men, who had fished for about 20 years, said they had seen many lean spells on the river before but had always caught two to four hilsa even then. They had never known a shortage like this one, and they were worried.

Md Shahjahan Majhi and Majnu Majhi of Tulatuli said hilsa used to come into the nets every year once the rains began. In 2026 there had been plenty of rain in May, yet their nets had still not caught hilsa. They said they had never seen such a drought of fish.

Md Rasel Majhi and Nazrul Majhi of Bholar Khal described the strain: "The ban on the river ended a few days ago. During that time we ran our households on borrowed money. For several days now we have not been getting hilsa, which has made it hard to run the household. We cannot even pay the NGO instalments. Every day we are under pressure from household costs and the samity instalments."

At Hajir Hat in Bheduria, Md Nurunnabi Majhi and Imon Majhi said that because of the shortage after the ban, many fishers no longer went out on the river, and many had left fishing to work as day labourers.

The shortage reached the markets of a district that Jagonews24 described as the source of 33 per cent of the country's hilsa. Md Arifur Rahman and Md Hossain, buyers at the Kitchen Market in Bhola town, said only two or three people were bringing hilsa to the market, and only a few fish each, which sold at high prices. They called hilsa a "golden deer" in the market and said its price had made it a food for the well-off.

Fish sellers Md Ruhul Amin and Md Nagar said they used to sell hilsa every day but had not been able to for several days because there was so little at the ghat. When a fisher brought hilsa in, the auction price went very high, and the traders who supply wholesale depots in Dhaka, Barishal and Chandpur bought the fish at that price. Sellers in the local market could not buy at such prices and still sell on, they said, so small fish were being sold instead. Hilsa, when they could sell it, used to go quickly and earn a better profit.

Fish seller Md Ibrahim said hilsa could not be bought at the ghat as before; he bought a few at a high price, and because the retail price was high they took a long time to sell. He gave these retail prices, earlier and in May 2026:

• A hilsa of about 500 grams: at most Tk 1,000 earlier; Tk 2,200 to 2,500 in May 2026.
• A hilsa of 300 to 350 grams: Tk 500 to 600 earlier; Tk 1,500 to 1,600 in May 2026.
• Jatka (young hilsa): Tk 200 to 300 a kg earlier; Tk 1,200 a kg in May 2026.
• A hilsa of about 1 kg: Tk 1,700 to 2,000 earlier; Tk 4,000 to 4,500 a kg in May 2026.

A Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) report from Bhola's Ilisha landing ghat on 1 May 2026, the first day after the ban, had put the price of a 1-kg hilsa at Tk 2,000 to 2,200, and other hilsa at Tk 1,000 to 1,500 a kg depending on size.

Bhola's district fisheries officer, Md Iqbal Hossain, told Jagonews24 that very few hilsa were being found in the river because of climate change. If rainfall increased further, he said, there was a chance that the number of hilsa in the river would rise somewhat. Three days earlier, on 9 May 2026, he had told The Daily Ittefaq that hilsa were somewhat fewer at this time of year because of climate change, that there was a good chance of plentiful hilsa in June and July, and that Bhola had 1 lakh 68 thousand registered fishers and more than 1 lakh unregistered ones.

Dr Md Anisur Rahman, a hilsa researcher at BFRI, told Jagonews24 that the peak hilsa season runs from July to the middle of November. Because of rainfall, he said, hilsa also move through the rivers in good numbers in May and June, though fewer than in the peak season. In his view climate change was the reason very few hilsa were being caught at that point, and if the matter was not researched and proper action taken, the hilsa resource would come under threat. He added that the catching of jatka and of mother hilsa gradually affects hilsa production.

Climate is one of several factors that the Department of Fisheries (DoF) itself lists. Its Yearbook of Fisheries Statistics of Bangladesh 2023-24, published in December 2024, says hilsa, once abundant in the 1970s, declined in many river systems in the 1990s, and it attributes the decline in the river catch to a combination of factors: closure of migratory routes, river siltation, overfishing, indiscriminate catching of brood fish and juveniles, the use of monofilament small-meshed nets (current jal), mechanisation of fishing, growing numbers of fishers, industrial pollution and climate variability.

In July 2024, Prothom Alo reported that the DoF had blamed falling rainfall for the smaller hilsa caught over the previous three years. Masud Ara, deputy chief of the DoF and head of its hilsa branch, told the paper that hilsa production and size had grown over a decade because of government measures, but that fewer hilsa had been found for two or three years because of low rainfall and other natural and weather-related causes, and that the average weight had fallen to 720 grams. DoF scientists also pointed to a growing number of submerged chars at the entrances from the Bay of Bengal through the Meghna estuary, which they said blocked the fish's path, so that fewer hilsa, especially large ones, came near the coast and into the rivers. Fisheries experts quoted in the same report said that when rainfall drops, hilsa move to deeper sea and come less often near rivers and the coast, and that while hilsa numbers usually rise once the monsoon arrives in June and July, for several years more hilsa had been caught in July and August, and large hilsa even in September.

The fishers had been off the water since 1 March. From the night of 28 February to 30 April 2026 the government banned all fishing in Bhola's rivers, including the Meghna, Tetulia, Kalabadar, Betua, Bura Gauranga and Ilisha, to protect jatka and raise fish production, BSS reported. The same ban applied in the country's six hilsa sanctuaries. District fisheries officer Iqbal Hossain told BSS that fishing for hilsa and all other fish was stopped in two sanctuaries covering 190 kilometres of the Meghna and Tetulia, and that a task force of law enforcement agencies would patrol the rivers. The fisheries department held awareness meetings with fishers from 26 February, starting at the Ilisha union fish ghat, with the coast guard, river police, fish traders and fishers taking part, and publicised the ban with banners, posters, leaflets and loudspeakers.

For the two months, BSS reported, 90,213 fishers were to receive 40 kg of government rice a month, and 13,600 fishers were brought under food assistance through the hilsa resource development project. Leaders of fish traders' associations told BSS that of the district's roughly 1 lakh 68 thousand registered fishers, about 1 lakh received assistance while 68 thousand did not, and they asked for help for unregistered fishers as well. Fishers asked NGOs to suspend loan instalments during the ban; on 1 May the fisheries officer told BSS that instalments had been suspended in that period. BSS also reported on 1 May that, for the first time, fishers had received six kinds of daily essentials alongside rice.

The first day after the ban looked promising. BSS reported on 1 May 2026 that fishers who went out after midnight were bringing in plenty of hilsa to the Ilisha ghat, where depots that had been shut for two months reopened, and that the president of the Bhola depot owners' association, Abul Bashar Badsha Mia, expected a good season.

Within a week the picture had changed. The Daily Ittefaq reported on 9 May 2026 that fishers in the Meghna, Tetulia and Ilisha were not finding hilsa and were disheartened. Abbas Majhi of Ilisha ghat said he had gone out with four crew and Tk 3,000 worth of diesel and come back a day later with only Tk 2,000 worth of fish, so he had stopped going out. Azgar Majhi of Rajapur said a day on the river in the peak season used to bring five to seven maunds of hilsa, but now days on the river brought nothing. Fish trader Sahabuddin Jamadar alleged to the paper that khuta and behundi nets were destroying all the fish in the river. Md Mamun, general secretary of the district small-scale fishers' association, said a correct list of genuine fishers was needed so that they could receive government support.

Bhola is a district of Barishal Division covering 3,403.48 square kilometres, according to Banglapedia. It is bounded by Lakshmipur and Barishal districts to the north, the Bay of Bengal to the south, Lakshmipur and Noakhali districts, the Meghna and the Shahbazpur channel to the east, and Patuakhali and Barishal districts and the Tetulia River to the west. Bhola became a sub-division under Noakhali in 1845, was moved to Barishal district in 1869, and became a district on 1 February 1984. Of its seven upazilas, Char Fasson is the largest and Burhanuddin the smallest. The 2022 census counted 1,932,518 people in the district.

The lower Meghna empties into the Bay of Bengal through four main mouths, the Tetulia (Ilsha), Shahbazpur, Hatia and Bamni, and Bhola Island sits among them. Bhola Sadar upazila, where Jagonews24's reporter met the fishers, has 13 unions, among them Dhania, Ilisha, Kachia, Shibpur and Bheduria.

The district fisheries office's at-a-glance page, last updated in August 2023, listed 1,64,886 registered fishers and 53,230 fish farmers in Bhola. It gave the fish catch of the Meghna in the district as 91,664 tonnes and of the Tetulia as 4,564 tonnes, noting that all seven upazilas lie along the Meghna and that the Tetulia flows past Bhola Sadar, Burhanuddin, Lalmohan and Char Fasson. The same page gave Bhola's hilsa production as 98,195 tonnes from the sea and 93,488 tonnes from rivers, 1,91,683 tonnes in all.

The DoF yearbook for 2023-24 recorded 168,674 tonnes of hilsa from Bhola that year: 89,013 tonnes from the lower Meghna, 4,093 tonnes from other rivers and 75,568 tonnes from the sea. That was the largest district total in the table; Barishal Division as a whole produced 348,834 tonnes.

Hilsa, Tenualosa ilisha, is the national fish of Bangladesh, and the DoF calls it the country's biggest single-species fishery. According to the 2023-24 yearbook, Bangladesh produced 529,487 tonnes of hilsa in 2023-24, about 5.29 lakh tonnes, against 571,342 tonnes in 2022-23, a fall of 7.33 per cent. The river catch fell 8.41 per cent, from 270,885 to 248,114 tonnes; 280,918 tonnes came from the sea and 455 tonnes from the Sundarbans. Hilsa made up 10.55 per cent of the country's total fish production of 5,018,483 tonnes that year.

The same yearbook's species table shows hilsa production rising from 313,753 tonnes in 2009-10 to the 2022-23 peak. In October 2023 the then fisheries and livestock minister told a press conference, as The Business Standard reported, that hilsa production had been 2.98 lakh tonnes in 2008-09. The yearbook says Bangladesh ranks first among the 11 hilsa-producing countries, and that hilsa has received a Geographical Indication registration as "Bangladesh Ilish".

The yearbook counted 1,829,932 fishers in Bangladesh in 2023-24, of them 1,785,253 men and 44,679 women. A 2015 Dhaka Tribune report put the number directly involved in catching hilsa for a living at about 450,000, with four to five million more involved indirectly in the trade.

Hilsa is a relative of the herring. FishBase records it as a marine, freshwater and brackish-water fish that is anadromous: it lives in the sea and enters rivers to breed. It reaches a maximum length of about 60 cm, with a common length of 36 cm, and matures at about 31 cm.

Banglapedia describes the life cycle in Bangladesh. Adults breed upstream in fresh water; the eggs float freely and hatch, the young grow in river channels and then go down to the sea to feed and grow before returning to the rivers as breeding adults. A large female can produce up to 2 million eggs. Hilsa spawn more or less throughout the year, with a minor season in February and March and a major one in September and October. The young fish caught on their way to the sea are called jatka. Hilsa feed mainly on plankton, including blue-green algae, diatoms, copepods and rotifers.

Banglapedia also lists the nets used: adult hilsa are caught mainly in fixed or drifting gill nets (chandi jal), with smaller amounts in berjal and lift nets, while jatka are taken with gear such as current jal and behundi jal. A BFRI survey in 1992-94 estimated that 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes of jatka were caught every year between January and April, more than half of them in the Meghna. Among the causes of the earlier decline in the hilsa fishery, it names lower water flow in the Ganges after the Farakka Barrage, heavy siltation, the catching of jatka, disrupted migration routes, loss of spawning, feeding and nursery grounds, and river pollution.

The March-April closure that ended on 30 April is one of several rules for protecting hilsa. The Dhaka Tribune reported in January 2015 that the Shahbazpur channel of the Meghna and the Tetulia River adjacent to Bhola were among the hilsa sanctuaries declared in 2003-04, along with the stretch of the Meghna between Shatnol and Char Alexander and the Andharmanik River; a fifth, at the Padma-Meghna estuary in Shariatpur, followed in 2010-11. At the time the five sanctuaries covered 350 square kilometres, and fishing for hilsa was banned in four of them in March and April. In that report Dr Md Anisur Rahman, then a senior scientific officer at BFRI, described a proposed sixth sanctuary in tributaries of the Meghna between Hizla and Mehendiganj in Barishal. The DoF yearbook for 2023-24 lists six hilsa sanctuaries alongside about 508 other fish sanctuaries.

The DoF says it carries out the Hilsa Fisheries Management Action Plan through awareness campaigns, rallies and meetings, enforcement of the fish conservation laws, hilsa sanctuaries, seasonal fishing bans, rice for poor fishers during bans, and alternative livelihoods for fishers. A separate ban protects mother hilsa in the main breeding season: in 2023, for example, it ran for 22 days from 12 October to 2 November, during which catching, carrying, selling, buying and storing hilsa was banned across the country, The Business Standard reported.

At sea, another closure was running when the fishers returned to the rivers. A notice of the Bhola district fisheries office, dated 16 April 2026, concerned a control room to enforce a 58-day ban, from 15 April to 11 June 2026, on fishing of any kind by all fishing vessels at sea.

The Department of Fisheries, under the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, regulates the fisheries sector, runs the district and upazila fisheries offices and compiles the annual yearbook through its Fisheries Resources Survey System. The Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute was founded in 1984 and began work in 1986. Its headquarters are in Mymensingh, and its riverine station in Chandpur leads its hilsa work; in July 2024 that station surveyed hilsa caught at 15 places in the country, Prothom Alo reported.

Photo: Toushik.hamid / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS), The Daily Ittefaq, Prothom Alo, The Business Standard, Dhaka Tribune, Department of Fisheries (Yearbook of Fisheries Statistics of Bangladesh 2023-24), District Fisheries Office Bhola, Banglapedia, FishBase, Wikipedia