After seven days at sea, the fishing trawler FV Kulsuma tied up at Nuniachhata ghat on the Bankkhali river in Cox's Bazar on Monday morning. Its 12 crew had cast their nets for five days without finding hilsa; on the sixth, off the Maheshkhali coast, they hauled in 2,200 fish. At the wholesale landing centre at nearby Fishery Ghat, traders bought the lot for Tk 2.64 million. Each fish weighed 700 to 900 grams, and by noon they were packed in ice and on a truck to Dhaka.

Aman Ullah, 54, the trawler's owner from Nuniachhata, said Cox's Bazar fishermen had seen no hilsa for three months and that repeated depressions in the Bay of Bengal had kept boats in port for two of them. His crew set their nets 10 to 12 kilometres west of Tajiakata in Maheshkhali. There is hilsa in the deep sea, he said, but taking a small trawler 80 to 90 kilometres out is dangerous.

Crew member Md Alamgir said each of the 12 fishermen would clear about Tk 50,000 after costs — not enough for a season, but a great deal for one day. Wholesale prices at Fishery Ghat on Monday were Tk 2,000–2,100 a kilo for one-kilo hilsa, Tk 1,700 for fish of 800–900 grams, Tk 1,200–1,250 for 500–700 grams and Tk 650–750 for 300–400 grams. Most of the medium-sized fish carried roe, fishermen and traders said.

Twenty-seven traders at the ghat said more than 300 trawlers had returned over the past few days with 200 to 300 hilsa apiece. Zainal Abedin, president of the Cox's Bazar marine fish traders' association, said natural disasters had kept fishermen ashore for two months; catches of hilsa and other sea fish had resumed in the past five or six days, with FV Kulsuma landing the most.

Behind the one lucky boat lies a fleet in trouble. Md Delwar Hossain, general secretary of the Cox's Bazar fishing boat owners' association, said 4,000 of the district's 6,000 trawlers were lying idle. A seven-day trip costs Tk 600,000–700,000 but the catch fetches only Tk 100,000–300,000, and many owners are selling their boats after repeated losses. The district's more than 120,000 fishermen are bearing the brunt.

Figures from the Cox's Bazar fish landing centre show 5,658 tonnes landed at the wholesale market in 2024-25, of which 1,628 tonnes was hilsa. In 2025-26 total landings fell to 2,039 tonnes, with hilsa at 522 tonnes. The district fisheries office says more than 20,000 tonnes of hilsa were caught across the district last fiscal year, but not even 500 tonnes in the first two to two and a half months of this one.

Dr Ashraful Haque, chief scientific officer at the Cox's Bazar marine fisheries research centre, points to warming seas, rising marine pollution, plastic and discarded nets strewn along the coast and the spread of destructive gear that kills eggs and fry. Fishing pressure, he said, now exceeds what the sea's stock can bear — and that is where the shortage begins.

Source: Prothom Alo