Policy a must to protect marine resources

They said the survey is needed for proper management, expansion and exploration of marine resources in the vast 1.66 lakh square kilometre area in the Bay of Bengal.

The vast ground of marine resources, which earn around 92 per cent of the annual export of fishes, is yet to be properly surveyed, managed and explored, they said.

No remarkable survey could be done on the huge area identified as the "Exclusive Economic Zone" in the Bay of Bengal since the independence, they said.

As such the fishing area could not be expanded there and remained confined to only four specific "fishing grounds", they said, adding that it also created scope for illegal fishing in the Bay of Bengal by the outsiders.

"A comprehensive survey could have stopped the scope for misleading the government about the stock of fisheries resources in the Bay," said a senior scientist officer of the fisheries department while talking to this correspondent yesterday.

Senior Fisheries Scientist Dr Giasuddin Khan of World Fish Centre in Dhaka said, "We are collecting only one- fourth of the total stock of marine fishes we have."

So, a policy for fishing and expansion of the fishing ground through a survey is essential, he said.

Meanwhile, speakers at a workshop on "Finalising a policy for exploration of marine fisheries resources" on Saturday opposed a recent decision to relax the restriction on fishing within 40-metre depth by trawlers.

They said it will put the ecosystem in the Bay at stake side by side with depriving some 30 lakh poor fishermen and boatmen of the coastal areas, who depend on fishing in the shallow water of the Bay for their earning.

The speakers blamed a vested quarter for prompting the decision on relaxing the restriction on the plea of non-availability of mother shrimps in the deep water due to shifting habitats to shallow water.

Marine Fisheries Survey Department Chief Scientific Officer Zafar Ahmed and Prof Dr Mohammad Zafar of Chittagong University Marine Science Institute spoke at the workshop with Parixmit Datta Chowdhury, joint secretary (Fisheries), in the chair.

The Ministry for Fisheries and Livestock relaxed the restriction on fishing by trawlers at 40-metre depth in the sea last month for five months.

There are about 511 species of fishes, including 36 species of shrimps, in the marine fishing ground in Bangladesh territory against some 260 species of mild water fishes.

Of them, at best 30 species of fishes are collected, around 25 per cent of the possible stock of fishes in the Bay, they said.

Lack of management hampered proper exploration of the marine resources while unchecked fishing and rampant collection of fish fries caused a decrease in productivity of marine fisheries alarmingly, they added.

At present some 121 trawlers, 42 for shrimps and 79 for other fishes, and 21,400 fishing boats have been engaged in commercial collection of fishes in the Bay.

Many of the fishing boats have no license and are fishing on the continental shelf, even during the spawning season, said the sources.

Nothing could be done to check this menace or develop the marine fisheries, they said blaming institutional weakness and absence of a policy in this regard.

Moreover, there were 170 types of duckweed, lichen and algae, which are consumed as food in the Bay of Bengal under the country's territory. Cultivation and export of Hypnea sp., Caulerpa, Mollusc like Green Mussel (Perna Viridis) Crassostrea sp. and Mretrix meretrix can enrich the country's economy immensely, they said.

But, there is no initiative for developing, managing or collecting these seafoods, they added.

They said over 1,000 tons of Hypnea sp. collected from Saint Martin Island in Cox's Bazar are being exported to the neighbouring countries.

Apart from this, there is also a huge stock of oyster, cockle and bivalve mollusc, which remained almost unnoticed, said the researchers and the experts.

In this regard they at a workshop organised by the same Department of Marine Fisheries last year called for setting up a separate department of marine fisheries.

But, no progress has been made to this end until today.