Carrying moneylenders' loans and fearing pirates, storms and incursions by Indian fishing boats, thousands of fishers and traders head into the Sundarbans this week for the dried-fish season, which opens on Friday, 30 October. For five months they will live in temporary huts on Dublar Char and other islands, drying their sea catch on bamboo racks.
Boats are being loaded with food, fuel and nets bought on credit, and fishers set out for Dublar Char from Thursday. The government's revenue target from the drying camps is Tk 8 crore. Md. Shariful Islam, assistant conservator of forests for the Sharankhola range of the East Sundarbans division, said the same Tk 8 crore target for Dublar Char's four camps in 2025-26 was missed because of bad weather and pirates: 5,431.7 tonnes of dried fish brought in Tk 73,722,493.
Biswas Shankar of Boalia village, Paikgachha, said he and 39 other fishers are going out with a fleet of five boats, some of them having borrowed Tk 15-20 lakh from moneylenders. Fisher Baram Sardar said: "We didn't get much hilsa at sea this season. Because of Indian fishers we couldn't even go to the deep sea." Part of any catch, he said, has to be handed to pirates.
Md. Kamal Uddin Ahmed, president of the Dublar Char Fishermen Group, said new pirate gangs are reported to be forming around the season, and traders paid lakhs of taka in extortion last season. Nistar Ahmed, commander of the Special Response Battalion (SRB-6), said 74 members of six pirate gangs have already surrendered and the SRB keeps a temporary camp on Dublar Char.
Khulna's conservator of forests, Imran Ahmed, said fishers have been told not to go into the deep sea alone and to keep 15 to 20 boats together at night, with forest guards posted at points across the Sundarbans. No forest produce may be used to build huts, depots or drying racks; all materials must be brought in. Building is due to start on 30 October.
By Department of Fisheries figures, Bangladesh's waters in the Bay of Bengal cover 118,813 sq km, with fishing limited to depths of 200 metres; about 237 industrial trawlers and 28,575 mechanised and traditional boats fish them. Khulna has 41,645 registered fishers, about 31,500 of whom go to the deep sea. The report is by Kazi Shamim Ahmed in Khulna and Farid Khan Mintu in Sharankhola.
Photo: Dried fish in Chittagong, Kritzolina / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Ajker Patrika
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