An eleven-day ban on hilsa netting was imposed by the department of fisheries yesterday to ensure uninterrupted spawning during the upcoming breeding season.
The ban, effective from early Sunday (October 13) to October 23, is expected to prevent roughly 15m mother hilsa from being caught ahead of time and about 46,800kg spawns from being destroyed.
Announcing the prohibition, Dr AKM Aminul Huq, divisional officer and deputy director of the department, said: “The ban will be effective on not only catching hilsa across the 7,000sq-km stretch of spawning grounds but also on its marketing, selling and transportation anywhere in the country.”
“The move will ensure safe spawning, protect mother hilsa and create a good breeding environment,” he added, urging consumers not to buy or eat hilsa during the season.
“The key to the success of the restriction is in its proper implementation and a collective awareness of all parties involved, which would hopefully save millions of eggs,” said Bankim Chandra, the assistant director of the department.
Hilsa, despite being a sea fish, lays eggs in rivers during the five days before and the five days after full moon in the Bangla month of Ashwin. Large numbers of fish are caught as they move to the Padma-Meghna-Jamuna delta for this purpose and also as the fish fries, commonly called jatka, swim back to the sea.
Fishery officials believe if only 50% of the lain eggs can be saved while in embryo, more than 29m jatka can be produced every year. A Jatka generally grows 2-2.5cm in length per month and starts its seaward journey after reaching 15-17cm. It moves back to sweet waters after growing to an adult size of 25-28cm.
“There is a year-round restriction against netting Jatka—below 23cm in length—throughout the country and saving 10-20% of them would mean about 200,000 more hilsa every year,” said the district fisheries officer Wahiduzzaman.
Fisheries officials have already started taking preparation including campaigning against premature netting through advertisements, posters, and organising awareness-raising and views-exchange programmes.
The district and upazila administrations, law enforcement agencies and authorities of navy and coast guards were instructed to monitor activities on the coastal rivers and estuaries and ensure that no violation of the ban order took place, sources said.
Under the fisheries ordinance amended on October 25, 2005, anyone violating a netting ban may be fined Tk1,000 with up to six months in prison for the first time, and a “double-punishment” in the event of a reoccurrence.