The peak hilsa season has begun on the Meghna and Tentulia rivers in Bhola, but fishermen are not netting the hilsa they hoped for. They return to shore every day in deep despair and, with few hilsa in the river, worry about paying back debts and loan instalments.

The fishermen say they go out on the river every day full of hope and weighed down by debt, only to come back disappointed.

Visits to fishing villages along the Meghna in Sadar upazila found fishermen out on the river in boats and trawlers from dawn to midnight casting their nets, but not catching the hilsa they want. They return to shore in despair, and many have stopped going out even in the peak season.

Fishermen Md Sabuj Majhi, Hanif Majhi and Habibul Majhi of the Nasir Majhi area of Sadar upazila said they go out in groups of five or six to catch hilsa, but even after casting nets all day they do not get the catch they hoped for. Some get four to six hilsa of different sizes, some 10 to 12, and some two or three. After selling the fish at the landing ghat and paying the fuel shop, some are left with Tk 1,000, others with Tk 500 to Tk 700. Shared among the fishermen, that comes to Tk 100 to Tk 200 each, and no more than Tk 300 at most. They are very worried about running their households and paying NGO instalments.

Md Saiful Majhi and Rakib Majhi, fishermen from the Tulatuli area, said the hilsa they hoped for are not to be found in the river, but they keep going out in hope.

They said many fishermen have stopped going to the river because of losses from the poor catch, while some are on the run under pressure to pay NGO instalments. Altogether, there is distress in the fishing villages.

Md Kamal Hossain and Md Monjurul Islam, traders at the Tulatuli fish landing ghat, said: "Before the monsoon we took advances from wholesale warehouse owners in Dhaka, Chandpur, Barishal and Khulna and gave them to the fishermen. The plan was that the hilsa the fishermen caught in the monsoon would be sent to those wholesalers, but with no hilsa being caught in the river, we are in trouble."

They added that if this continues for much longer in the peak season, pressure from the wholesale moneylenders will force them to close their warehouses and flee too.

Bhola district fisheries officer Biswajit Kumar Deb said there is some intermittent rain at present. If rainfall increases, fishermen will get the hilsa they hope for in the river, and their problems will quickly be solved.

About two and a half lakh fishermen make their living fishing on the Meghna and Tentulia rivers in Bhola's seven upazilas. Of them, about 165,000 are registered with the government.

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