Survey on marine fish stock to begin next month
The Department of Fisheries is expected to start assessing the fish stock in the Bay of Bengal from next month, nearly three decades after allowing fish catch without any survey on fisheries reserve in the sea.
“We are ready to begin cruise for assessing the stock of aquatic resources in the sea,” said ABM Anwarul Islam, project director of the Bangladesh Marine Fisheries Capacity Building Project under the DoF.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to inaugurate the survey vessel, RV Meen Sandhani, by the middle of next month, he said, adding that the survey will begin after the inauguration.
The RV Meen Sandhani was procured at a cost of Tk 65 crore, with the majority of the finance coming from Islamic Development Bank and the Malaysian government.
“Survey is a continuous process. We have a two-year plan to carry out the survey in the Bay of Bengal. We will do it by segmenting areas. And we hope to give an assessment by 2019.”
At the same time, a management or strategic plan on how to manage the marine stock for sustainable use will be submitted, he added.
The RV Meen Sandhani, now in Chittagong, is the first such vessel procured in nearly three decades. The last vessel went out of order in 1989, DoF officials said.
Since then no survey was conducted to estimate the actual amount of marine fish resources in the sea, although the government in the meantime gave permits to more vessels, raising fears of over-fishing and depletion of reserves.
Already, the catches of various fish species such as pomfret have fallen because of excessive fishing in the Bay of Bengal, according to a publication by the DoF.
Currently, thousands of fishing boats and 247 commercial trawlers ply near the coast and deep water of the Bay of Bengal, where 475 species of fish, 36 species of shrimp, among others, can be found.
The sea has more than 90 species of commercially important fishes and Bangladesh has the right to explore marine resources on 118,813 square kilometres of the seawater, according to the DoF.
Islam said it would be possible to carry out survey in the whole 118,813 square kilometres of Bay of Bengal through the vessel.
“We will get an idea of the amount of fish and the aquatic resources we have in the sea and how many trawlers can be permitted to catch the fishes,” he said, adding that it would also be possible to identify new fishing grounds and new species.
The vessel would enable the state to run continuous assessment of aquatic organism in the Bay for the next three-four decades. “It is a big asset for the country,” Islam said.
Based on the last survey during 1984-1986, the stock of demersal fish, which is generally confined to shallow ocean or sea floor, was estimated at 188,000 tonnes between 10-metre and 200-metre depth of water, according to the DoF publication.
The maximum sustainable yield was estimated at 47,500-88,500 tonnes.
Over the years, marine catches have been rising. In fiscal 2014-15, total catches from seawater rose to 599,846 tonnes from 595,385 tonnes a year earlier, DoF data shows.
In fiscal 2015-16, catches through industrial trawlers rose 24 percent year-on-year to 105,000 tonnes, said Nasiruddin Md Humayun, director (marine) of the DoF.
Comments