"If we buy 50 kg of fish in the morning, 40 kg is damaged fish and 10 kg is good fish. Hilsa of 700-800 grams now cost over Tk 1,500 a kg, and 500-gram hilsa over Tk 1,200. These are beyond the reach of ordinary people. So the demand from the middle class is mostly for the half-damaged fish the fishermen bring back from the sea."

So said Md Milon Hossain, a retail fish seller at Alipur bazar, next to a large fish landing centre in Patuakhali.

Milon is not alone; many small fish traders at Alipur bazar say the same. A visit to several shops in the market on the afternoon and evening of 16 July found fish bought from fishermen with their heads, tails or middles cut away. These were selling at Tk 350 a kg, while medium-sized fish sold at Tk 450 to 550. When more fish arrive at the landing centre, the price of damaged fish falls a little; when the catch falls, it rises again.

Fishermen and traders say that when fishermen cast their nets in the deep sea, many fish are cut after getting caught in the net, or are bitten by crabs. Various sea fish also bite off and eat part of the hilsa. When these fish reach the landing centre, they are sorted out and bought cheaply by wholesalers, who sell them on to ordinary people.

Md Yunus, who had come to buy fish, said hilsa was very cheap four or five years ago, when large, good hilsa cost Tk 200 to 300 a kg. But now a one-kilogram hilsa costs over Tk 2,000, so poor and middle-class people cannot afford it and are buying these damaged and rotten fish instead.

A buyer named Abul Basar said: "I came to the market to buy hilsa, but good hilsa is very expensive. I can't afford it on what I earn driving an auto-rickshaw. So I'm asking the price of damaged hilsa. They want Tk 350 for a kilo of mixed small and large damaged hilsa. Now I see even damaged hilsa is becoming impossible to buy. If I can get it a bit cheaper, I'll take a kilo home."

A fish seller named Abdullah lamented that, with sea fish declining every year, in a year or two people would not even get damaged hilsa. "If there is no hilsa in the sea, where will damaged hilsa come from? So the government should look into why hilsa is declining. Otherwise those of us who are fishermen and in the fish trade will be even worse off."

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