Hilsa is a seasonal fish with a taste for travel. In the breeding season it spreads from the sea into big rivers and small rivers alike. When it finds fast-flowing fresh water, it travels a thousand miles, past haors and beels, as far as the foot of the northern hills in the monsoon to spawn, and then returns to the sea. But on the way into fresh water to spawn, and on the way back to the sea, it is caught by fishers in shoal after shoal.

Fish in open water do not recognise national boundaries, and hilsa is even more reckless in this respect. As it roams freely from one country's waters into another's, it is trapped in fishers' nets in country after country. Hilsa has caught people's attention for its matchless taste and aroma, so it is highly prized, and highly priced, in many countries.

In our country the silvery hilsa has the status of national fish. But indiscriminate fishing all year round has left it struggling to survive. So, to protect the national fish and allow it to breed, special rules have been drawn up that set time limits on catching it.

The government's fisheries department is struggling hard to keep the ban in force. Because our poor fishers have no alternative work during the breeding-season bans, free food is supplied to them and their families. Motivation programmes are being run to make people aware of the ban. Even so, river police have been deployed to stop illegal fishing, and punishments include burning nets, jail and fines.

But what is being done to enforce the hilsa ban in Bangladesh is not bearing much fruit. Hilsa does not respect foreign boundaries. Why would fishers in neighbouring countries obey our ban? They slip into our waters and take hilsa without hesitation. India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and China fish day and night with giant fishing boats, taking hilsa and other fish from the sea. We impose a ban so that young fish grow big instead of being caught, and foreigners come into our waters and scoop them up.

Neighbouring India in particular has its own hilsa ban, but its timing does not match ours. Neighbouring Myanmar has no ban period of its own for hilsa.

This year (2024) Bangladesh imposed a 65-day government ban from 20 May. But there is a gap between India's own ban and Bangladesh's. Indian fishers went out on the rivers and sea 37 days before Bangladesh's ban ended, which has benefited their fishers.

After Myanmar's fishers, at any time, and Indian fishers, 37 days early, have entered the waters and taken away trawler-loads of fish, our fishers go out on the rivers and sea to find them empty. They burn trawler fuel, waste their time and come back to the ghat empty-handed.

If they return to the ghat with empty trawlers, how will they repay their loans? How will the benefit of the subsidy for 65 days of food for our fishers be measured? What is the way to deal with the hunger of our own fishers and to stop foreign fishers from stealing fish?

It is not possible to put in place enough security to guard all our waters. Some measures have been taken, but they are inadequate. In some cases local fishers and residents make many complaints against those guarding the waters, saying they let foreign trawlers fish in exchange for money. During Bangladesh's hilsa ban, some of our own dishonest trawlers often catch fish, smuggle it abroad in the deep sea and return to the ghat empty-handed. Because buying and selling hilsa in the domestic market is banned, they do not hesitate to resort to this kind of corruption.

Everything is dark and dangerous on every side, and only the hilsa is destroyed. Although our domestic market is empty of hilsa, our hilsa is bought and sold freely in foreign markets all year round. This year, while we stay away from buying, selling and eating hilsa in the domestic market because of the 65-day ban, Bangladeshi hilsa is being sold abroad at much lower prices.

Bangladeshi hilsa can always be bought at Gariahat, Maniktala and Jadubabur Bazar in Kolkata, the big Suwati market in Yangon, the Bangla Bazar at Brick Lane in London, fish shops in the Bengali neighbourhood of Jackson Heights in New York, and Bengali shops at Nihombashi and Toyosu in Tokyo, as well as by ordering through "takkyubin".

Most of this hilsa is caught secretly at sea through collusion and shipped abroad by illegal routes. Those involved smuggle hilsa while evading tax. Bangladeshi hilsa with roe is in great demand in foreign markets, and this roe-bearing hilsa is caught secretly while the ban is in force at home. Such theft is hard to stop with an ordinary ban. Do we have the capacity and the integrity to post guards everywhere, from river estuaries to the deep sea?

If Bangladeshi hilsa with roe can be sold and eaten abroad all year round, why is such austerity needed in our domestic market for 65 days? Another point is that before ordinary village people even learn about the ban, the wealthy buy up even the small hilsa in the domestic market at high prices and store it in their freezers for their own enjoyment. As a result, people across the country, apart from a few big cities, have forgotten what it is to see hilsa arrive in the market even in season.

There has also been striking talk of farming hilsa in ponds after extensive research, but results seem a long way off. By the laws of nature, the timing of rainfall has changed. The climate no longer behaves as it used to. The current does not come to the rivers on time, and the hilsa spawning season has shifted. This year floods, drought, lack of rain, sea storms and long heatwaves have had a seriously harmful effect on hilsa research.

Although the media widely reported foreign trawlers defying our ban and taking hilsa, the authorities concerned showed no reaction. So this year, even though the rules were followed, there was not enough hilsa in the market in season. On the other hand, fishing families in debt have lost the chance to stand on their own feet because of the long ban on catching wild fish. They have been seen protesting that the allocation for them is far too small.

With no work during this period, they sit idle at home. There have been demands to shorten the ban period for them, and to align the ban at least with India's timetable. Our fisheries policy on hilsa needs urgent change for this.

Keeping in view the change in the hilsa breeding and fishing season, it has become very urgent to impose a common ban across countries, or an international ban, at the same time and to lift it on time. At the same time, there is no room to ignore secret hilsa fishing at sea, theft by foreign fishers and the smuggling of hilsa abroad from the sea. Exporting hilsa abroad while depriving ordinary people in the country also seems a deeply inhumane act.

The great majority of people in the country have forgotten the taste of hilsa, while the rich spend heavily in upmarket restaurants abroad to taste smuggled hilsa. These things create a stark contrast nowadays. So, along with enforcing a single common ban period across countries for catching hilsa, it is necessary to be extremely strict in stopping the illegal smuggling of hilsa.

The writer is a professor in the Department of Social Work at Rajshahi University and a former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences.

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