More than 10,000 fishermen in Gohira area of the Chittagong district have been sitting idle since the Met Office issued cautionary signal three along the coast, prior to landfall of Cyclone Mahasen.
The tropical storm formed far out to sea and swept Bangladesh's coastal areas yesterday, leaving scores of fishermen without a job.
Some fishermen anchored their boats with fishing nets in the adjacent canal of the Shankha river, while others kept their boats tied up on the beach.
“Cautionary signal three means we have to stay idle at home,” said fisherman Jalal Ahmed.
These signals put the livelihood of the farmers in jeopardy, he told the Dhaka Tribune.
Gohira is located in the Anwara upazila of the coastal district, and is home to around 40,000 people.
The Dhaka Tribune found thousands of fishing boasts anchored in the nearby canals of Shankha river and on the beach.
“I will have to provide for my family by taking loans from others if the cyclone affects the area strongly,” said Obaidur Rahman Mintu who works on a fishing boat.
The cautionary signal suggests that fishermen should not go out to sea till further notice.
On Wednesday, the Met Office declared cautionary signal eight as the cyclone headed towards the bay.
“We can easily relate cyclonic and other storm-related disasters in recent years to climate change,” said Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, a member of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The Met Office announced cautionary signal three or higher, 89 times in 2007, the most in recent years.
The rising number of such depressions in the bay is clearly the result of climate change, he said.
Md Faruq Hossain, upazila nirbahi officer of Anowara in the district, acknowledged the problems of the fishermen.
He said they were powerless in the face of nature.
In 1991, a severe cyclone hit the Bangladeshi coast, killing at least 138,000 people in a single night.
Some 6,000 people were killed in the union of Raipur alone. The village Gohira is located under this union parishad.
A vast expanse of agricultural land has become barren due to the incursion of saline water during the 1991 cyclone and its associated tidal surge.
The lack of adequate coastal embankments in the area often lets sea waves flood the region, forcing locals to rely on fishing as their only means of income.