Hilsa output at an eight-year low: the minister's assurance and the hard facts

Bangladesh's hilsa production fell to about 5 lakh tonnes in the 2024-25 fiscal year, the lowest in eight years and the lowest since 2016-17, according to Department of Fisheries figures that Fisheries and Livestock Minister Mohammad Amin Ur Rashid presented at a press conference at the Secretariat on Monday, 6 April 2026, ahead of Jatka Conservation Week. The minister called raising hilsa production a major challenge in the present circumstances. Five days later, on 11 April 2026, a journalist, columnist and deputy editor of Jago News, examined those figures in a column headlined "Hilsa production: crisis, the minister's assurance and hard reality". He welcomed the minister's assurance as positive but argued that implementation, not assurance, would be the real test, and that the crisis facing the national fish had several causes at once.

The briefing was held to mark Jatka Conservation Week 2026, observed from 7 to 13 April in 20 hilsa-rich districts under the slogan "If we stop catching jatka, rivers and seas will be filled with hilsa", with the opening programme in Chandpur Sadar. According to UNB and The Daily Star, the minister said hilsa made up about 9.79 per cent of the country's total fish production and nearly 1 per cent of its gross domestic product, that more than 80 per cent of the world's hilsa came from Bangladesh's rivers, estuaries and coastal waters, and that Bangladesh ranked first among the 11 countries that produce the fish. About 6 lakh people fished for hilsa directly, he said, while another 20 to 25 lakh worked in transport, trade, net and boat making, ice production, processing and export. He also noted that hilsa had been recognised as a Geographical Indication product of Bangladesh.

He named the problems that made output hard to sustain: rivers filling with silt, climate change, river pollution and growing pressure on fishery resources. The daily Desh Rupantor reported on 7 April that he singled out siltation as a key cause and said sandbars would be cleared under river and canal dredging programmes so that hilsa could move freely. He said the ministry would work with all stakeholders to meet these challenges.

Asked about the high price of hilsa, the minister said, as UNB reported, that the government's priority was to increase production, which would improve supply and bring market prices down, and that it was also working to streamline the whole chain from production to consumer. Describing the government's conservation measures, he said these had steadily increased hilsa production, and that joint drives by law enforcement agencies and the administration had spread jatka beyond the Meghna to rivers such as the Padma, Jamuna, Brahmaputra and Surma, with significant hilsa catches being reported in many districts along the Padma and Jamuna.

State Minister for Fisheries and Livestock Sultan Salauddin Tuku told the same briefing that 40,000 fishing families were receiving, for the first time, a two-month food package of 80 kg of rice, 12 kg of flour, 10 kg of oil, 8 kg of lentils, 4 kg of sugar and 16 kg of potatoes, worth about Tk 6,000 per family, according to Desh Rupantor. Asked whether fuel shortages were keeping trawlers from going to sea, the minister said there was no major problem so far.

The figures behind the column come from the Department of Fisheries (DoF). As the ministry's series was published by Desh Rupantor on 7 April 2026, hilsa production in each fiscal year was:

• 2016-17: 4.96 lakh tonnes
• 2017-18: 5.17 lakh tonnes
• 2018-19: 5.32 lakh tonnes
• 2019-20: 5.50 lakh tonnes
• 2020-21: 5.65 lakh tonnes
• 2021-22: 5.66 lakh tonnes
• 2022-23: 5.71 lakh tonnes, the highest of the series
• 2023-24: 5.29 lakh tonnes
• 2024-25: about 5 lakh tonnes, the lowest in eight years

The longer trend had been upward. In October 2023 the then fisheries and livestock minister, SM Rezaul Karim, said production had risen by 92 per cent in 15 years, from 2.98 lakh tonnes in 2008-09 to 5.71 lakh tonnes in 2022-23, The Business Standard reported. The writer credited that growth to the declaration of sanctuaries, the conservation of jatka and the enforcement of fishing bans. Most of the catch now comes from the sea: Mongabay reported in June 2023 that of the 565,183 tonnes produced in 2020-21, about 65 per cent came from the sea and the rest from inland rivers.

In the column he wrote that this growth had stalled in recent years, that there were complaints of falling catches in some areas, and that fishers, especially in the Meghna basin and the coastal belt, said they were landing less hilsa than before. In his reading, the minister's statement had to be taken seriously, and a close look at the situation showed a crisis that was deep and had many sides.

Two days after the briefing, scientists added a warning of their own. At a seminar for Jatka Conservation Week at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council auditorium in Dhaka, reported by The Daily Star on 8 April 2026, Mohammad Ashraful Alam, a senior scientific officer at the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI), said the average size of hilsa had fallen to a six-year low. The average length was 35.7 cm in 2019-20 and 2020-21, 37.0 cm in 2021-22 and 37.2 cm in 2022-23, before falling to 36.6 cm in 2023-24, 34.7 cm in 2024-25 and 34.0 cm in 2025-26.

He linked the decline to overfishing, the catching of jatka, human interventions, environmental change, poorer water quality and less food in the rivers. Size varied by region. Hilsa landed at Cox's Bazar, which complete their life cycle in the sea, were the largest, averaging 38.5 cm and 780 grams, while those from Rajshahi, confined to river systems where growth conditions are poorer, averaged 29 cm and 340 grams. Heavy river fishing and illegal nets took large fish more often, he said, and coastal overfishing during the migration from sea to river caught many mature fish before they could breed. He presented egg production estimates that rose from 599,720 kg in 2015 to 811,711 kg in 2024 and 884,802 kg in 2025, but noted that another projection for 2025 put the figure at 791,564 kg, a fall he linked to the loss of large breeding fish.

At the same seminar the minister urged scientists to research more actively, to increase jatka numbers and to improve artificial hatching, and he called the hilsa shortage a nationwide problem. State Minister Tuku said that stopping jatka fishing completely would significantly increase hilsa production.

Hilsa, Tenualosa ilisha, locally ilish, is a member of the herring family Clupeidae and the national fish of Bangladesh. Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia, describes a fast-swimming, silver-scaled fish that can reach 60 cm, although most specimens measure 35 to 40 cm; a large hilsa weighs about 2.5 kg. Females grow faster and larger than males, and the fish matures in one to two years. It lives in the sea, in estuaries and in rivers, from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal and the seas off Vietnam and China, and runs up rivers including the Indus, the rivers of India, the Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Padma, Jamuna, Meghna and Karnaphuli in Bangladesh. It feeds mainly on plankton.

The hilsa is anadromous: adults leave the sea and swim up the rivers to spawn in fresh water. A large female can produce up to 2 million eggs. Spawning goes on through much of the year, with a minor season in February and March and a major one in September and October. The free-floating eggs hatch in the rivers, the larvae feed and grow in nursery grounds, and in about six to ten weeks they reach 12 to 20 cm. At this stage they are called jatka, and they start their journey down to the sea, where they feed and grow before returning as breeding adults.

That seaward run is when the young are most exposed. Banglapedia records that a BFRI survey in 1992-94 estimated that 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes of jatka were caught each January-to-April season with gears such as the jagat berjal, the current jal and the behundi jal, and that more than half of the jatka catch came from the Meghna. Fishing regulations did not permit the catching of jatka, the encyclopedia notes, yet the practice continued.

The column put jatka catching first among the causes of the crisis, calling it a present-day practice that destroys the future. The writer wrote that although catching jatka was banned by law, it had not stopped, and that complying with the ban was hard for fishers living in poverty.

His second cause was the state of the rivers. Many rivers of the Padma-Meghna basin no longer flowed as they once did, he wrote, and encroachment, siltation that reduces navigability and unplanned construction were obstructing the movement and breeding of a migratory fish that must come from the sea into fresh water to spawn. Banglapedia describes the same pressures over a longer span. Until about 1972 the hilsa fishery was concentrated in upstream rivers such as the Padma, Meghna, Karatoya, Rupsa, Shibsa and Payra; it later declined severely upstream and moved to the lower rivers, estuaries, coast and sea. The encyclopedia lists among the causes the low dry-season discharge of the Ganges after the Farakka Barrage and the heavy siltation that followed, the disruption of migration routes, the loss of spawning, feeding and nursery grounds, and flood control and irrigation works. The closure of the Kumar river cut off the hilsa's route from the sea through the Nabaganga to the Padma, and the Chandpur Irrigation and Flood Control Project and the Meghna-Dhonagoda Irrigation and Flood Control Project damaged nursery grounds of the young fish.

His third cause was pollution, which he called an invisible killer. He wrote that industrial waste, tannery effluent and plastic were destroying the hilsa's breeding grounds, and pointed in particular to the rivers around Dhaka. Increased river pollution is also among the causes of decline listed by Banglapedia. Mongabay, reporting on the hilsa in June 2023, cited a 2015 study that blamed higher salinity, low river flow, dams upstream and downstream of fishing areas, siltation and pollution from settlements, industry and agriculture, and noted that salinity, temperature and conductivity affect water quality and dissolved oxygen. The same report cited a 2020 study of the Andharmanik river sanctuary which found that human activities, including a 1,320-megawatt coal-fired power plant, had reduced water flow and depth in the study area.

His fourth cause was climate change: rising sea temperatures, abnormal rainfall and shifting salinity, which he wrote were affecting the hilsa's natural life cycle. In the Mongabay report, scientists said climate change was contributing to a fall in the number of eggs laid, and the Soil Resource Development Institute said that river salinity rises as the sea level rises, affecting juvenile hilsa when spawning grounds shift further downstream. Anisur Rahman, then a chief scientific officer at BFRI, told Mongabay that human activity, climate change, siltation and rising riverbeds were disrupting, moving or eliminating the hilsa's migration routes and breeding habitats, that pollution was pushing the fish from the rivers towards the deep sea, and that the growing number of trawlers and other vessels added to the pressure.

To show what the figures meant on the water, the column cited Abdur Rahim, a fisher from Char Fasson in Bhola district who had caught hilsa for 20 years. As quoted in the column, he said: "We used to get 20 to 25 kg of hilsa in a day; now if we get 5 to 7 kg we count ourselves lucky." The column said that, unable to find other work during the fishing bans, he had been forced to borrow, and so often took the risk of going out to catch jatka. In the writer's view, his experience reflected that of thousands of fishers caught between the law and their livelihood.

Similar accounts had been reported before. In June 2023 Mongabay quoted Abdul Gaffar Majhi, a fisher from Patuakhali who had worked the Rabnabad Channel for two decades, as saying he had seen no hilsa recently in the channel or the nearby rivers, and reported that fishers were landing smaller catches on their usual routes despite the two annual three-week bans.

At the 6 April briefing the minister listed the government's main protections, as reported by UNB:

• A 58-day ban on all fishing in the Bay of Bengal from 15 April to 11 June.
• A 22-day ban on hilsa fishing in the peak breeding season.
• A complete ban on catching, transporting and selling jatka from 1 November to 30 June.
• Six hilsa sanctuaries and seasonal fishing bans in designated areas.
• A marine protected area of 3,188 square kilometres.
• Food aid and support for alternative livelihoods for fishers, with projects such as Sustainable Coastal and Marine Fisheries and Hilsa Resource Development.

He said about 3.67 lakh fisher families received 40 kg of rice a month for four months, 58,720 tonnes a year in all, and that 619,312 families had received 25 kg of food during the breeding-season ban. Under the Hilsa Resource Development and Management Project, fishers were also given training, equipment and even calves for other income. Against illegal current and behundi nets, a 30-day Special Combing Operation 2026 had been run in January and February in 96 upazilas of 18 districts, followed by a 15-day drive in March in 79 upazilas, with drives to continue until June.

Mongabay's 2023 report listed the six sanctuaries and their lengths: about 100 km of the Meghna from Shatnal to Char Alexander; 90 km of the Shahbazpur channel in the Meghna estuary; 100 km of the Tentulia river; 40 km of the Andharmanik river; 20 km of the lower Padma; and 83 km of the Meghna from Hizla to Mehendiganj. Fishing is closed in March and April in all of them except the Andharmanik, where the closure runs from November to January.

The law behind these bans had changed the day before the column appeared. The Protection and Conservation of Fish (Amendment) Act, 2026 (Act No. 25 of 2026), dated 10 April 2026 and in force immediately, amended the Protection and Conservation of Fish Act, 1950. It defined a fish sanctuary as an area or whole water body declared in the official gazette where fish and other aquatic life are protected so that they can breed, thrive and move freely, and empowered the government to declare such sanctuaries, with fishing banned permanently or for a set period. It replaced the Act's main penalty, a minimum of one year and up to two years in prison or a fine of up to Tk 5,000, with imprisonment of up to two years or a fine of up to Tk 5 lakh, and raised the penalties for current-net offences to up to three years' imprisonment and a fine of up to Tk 10 lakh at the most serious level.

The column acknowledged the sanctuaries, the breeding-season ban and the VGF rice, and the minister's statement that these measures would be strengthened and new plans made to raise production. But the writer wrote that in many cases the support was not enough or did not arrive on time, and that fishers were then driven to break the law.

The column ended with five proposals, set out here as the writer argued them:

• Alternative livelihoods: bans alone cannot solve the problem, so fishers need microcredit, training and other jobs.
• River restoration and dredging: regular dredging and the removal of encroachments to restore navigability.
• Strict pollution control: effluent treatment plants made mandatory in industry, with close monitoring.
• Technology and research: modern tools, including satellite tagging, to track the movement of hilsa and guide policy.
• Regional cooperation: coordinated action by Bangladesh, India and Myanmar, without which, he wrote, hilsa conservation cannot fully succeed.

He wrote that Bangladesh had shown success in protecting hilsa before, but that keeping it up would need a tougher, more science-based and more humane approach, and he warned that without effective steps now the hilsa might one day survive only in stories.

Photo: Fahad Faisal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24 (column by its deputy editor, 11 April 2026), UNB, The Daily Star, Desh Rupantor, The Business Standard, Mongabay, Banglapedia, Laws of Bangladesh (Protection and Conservation of Fish (Amendment) Act, 2026)