Good returns for the money spent made pabda fish farming popular in Maheshpur upazila of Jhenaidah district, Jagonews24 reported in September 2020. Only two farmers in the upazila took up pabda in 2016; by then their number had grown to 30. More than 150 tonnes of pabda were produced in the previous season, and the fisheries department expected output to rise again in the next one.
Maheshpur is a border upazila of Jhenaidah district in Khulna division, in south-western Bangladesh. It covers 417.85 sq km and borders the Indian districts of North 24 Parganas and Nadia to the north and west. Its main river is the Kapotaksha. The 2011 census counted 332,514 people in the upazila.
From fry to market fish
Farmers bring pabda fry from private hatcheries in Mymensingh and raise them in ponds on mixed and pelleted feed. Upazila fisheries officer Alamgir Hossain said fry are usually stocked at the start of March and the fish are ready for harvest from six months later.
Other species are kept in the same pond to keep the water in good condition, a practice the farmers call mixed farming. Farmer Abbas said pelleted feed is used in most cases to keep the fish in good shape. Another farmer said the fisheries department trains them in various ways, and when a problem arises its officials come to test the pond water and take the steps needed.
Costs, returns and sales at the pond
According to the report, a one-bigha pond typically cost Tk 1.5 lakh to run and produced fish worth about Tk 3 lakh. Pabda sold at the pond side for an average of Tk 330 a kilogram.
Easy selling was a big draw. Abbas said that whether 150 or 200 maunds were harvested, large wholesalers from Dhaka, Chattogram and elsewhere bought the catch straight from the pond. Raju, who began farming pabda with his father after finishing his studies, said he hoped to sell pabda worth about Tk 2.5 lakh that year.
Alamgir Hossain said pabda farming was more profitable than any other branch of agriculture. The fisheries department, he said, regularly encouraged farmers and also helped them sell. Pabda from Maheshpur was sent to India under letters of credit, and demand was high in domestic markets such as Dhaka, Chattogram and Cumilla.
What the pabda is
The pabda (Ompok pabda), also called the pabdah catfish, is a native catfish of the family Siluridae. According to the FishBase database, it grows to a maximum of 30 cm and lives in clear and muddy rivers, streams, ponds and lakes in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has an elongated body, a large head, a wide mouth and a pair of barbels.
The IUCN assessed the pabda as Near Threatened in 2009. Bangladeshi researchers describe it as an endangered indigenous fish. A 2012 study in the North American Journal of Aquaculture developed a method for freezing pabda sperm and recommended spreading the technology to commercial hatcheries. Maheshpur's farmers, too, depend on hatchery fry.
Photo: Biswarup Ganguly / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Sources: Jagonews24, FishBase, IUCN Red List (Ompok pabda, 2009), North American Journal of Aquaculture (Sarder et al., 2012), Wikipedia
Comments
(0)