Dried popa fish (popa shutki) made on the Cox's Bazar coast is being exported to the United States, Hong Kong and China, where it is used in soups and other dishes; the dried swim bladder and scales yield collagen used in cosmetics and medicine. But smaller catches at sea over recent months are cutting exports.

Abid Ahsan, owner of the exporter Sagar Fish Export in North Nuniachhata and a director of the Cox's Bazar chamber, said he shipped 70 tonnes of dried popa to six companies in the three countries last year, produced at a cost of Tk 6 crore. In the first eight months of this year he has exported 30 tonnes. The price there is now a kilogram, down from 2. He has invested about Tk 15 crore in the factory, land included, and employs 30 workers.

Export-grade popa comes from the deep sea and is mostly caught on long lines. More than 120 trawlers fish for it with hooks; 28 from Maheshkhali, Ghatibhanga, Sonadia and Chowfaldandi supply this factory regularly. Wholesale prices are Tk 300 to Tk 400 a kilogram: Tk 300 for fish kept on ice, Tk 400 for fish salted in the belly. Fishers now salt the catch, because poor-quality ice spoils the dried product.

At the factory, the salt and guts are removed and the fish washed in six tanks, then sun-dried on bamboo racks for three to four days. It is packed by grade, held in cold storage at 5 to 10 degrees and sent in cartons to Chattogram port. Dried popa has 32 grades, and buyers' representatives supervise quality on site. About three kilograms of raw fish make one kilogram of dried popa.

Trawler skipper Abdul Nabi said crews set lines of three to four thousand hooks 60 to 70 kilometres offshore and stay at sea for seven or eight days. His crew caught Tk 15 lakh worth of popa last year but has sold only Tk 7 lakh worth in the past eight months. Another fisher, Shamsul Alam, said 18 kinds of popa were caught a few years ago; now it is 12.

Fishers blame trawling vessels from Myanmar, India and Chattogram that sweep the sea floor. District fisheries officer Md Nazmul Huda said his office has no modern vessel to monitor trawlers in the deep sea, but runs regular drives against banned current and behundi nets with the coast guard, navy and river police.

Former chamber president Abu Morshed Chowdhury said Cox's Bazar had 27 popa-drying factories a decade ago; more than 24 have stopped for lack of fish, losses, easy credit and government incentives. The roughly 700 drying yards at Nazirartek produced at least Tk 300 crore worth of dried fish last year. The report is by Prothom Alo's Cox's Bazar correspondent Abdul Kuddus.

Source: Prothom Alo