Fisheries resources of Bangladesh: A review

Fisheries sector plays a significant role in national food security, empowerment and foreign exchange earnings in the national economy of Bangladesh. At the same time, Bangladesh is blessed with enormous water resources of inland culture (8,21,923 ha), inland capture (38,90,282 ha) and marine (1,18,81,300 ha), having great potentials of fisheries production. Inland culture, inland capture and marine fisheries provides 56.76%, 28.19% and 15.05% fisheries production, respectively. The aim of this review paper is to provide a comprehensive overview on fisheries resources of Bangladesh, those are underutilized and/or need emphasis to enhance more fish production. Recently, inland culture fisheries production has increased rapidly due to adoption of improved farming practices by the farmers. However, inland capture and marine fisheries production has not yet been attained to its optimum level due to over exploitation, fish habitat degradation, siltation of water bodies and water pollution. Therefore, to increase inland capture fisheries production and conserve biodiversity, various approaches such as community-based fisheries management, beel nurseries, stocking fingerlings of endangered species, establishment of fish sanctuaries, cage and pen culture systems can be adopted. Additionally, existing banning rules and regulations of catching fish during breeding season from inland capture water bodies like rivers, haors, baors, beels etc. should be implemented properly for conserving biodiversity and increasing fish production, as banning of 22-days in rivers and 65-days in marine water have significantly increased hilsha fish production. In addition, blue economy has recently gained impressive attention in Bangladesh due to getting huge marine water resources from Myanmer in 2012 and India in 2014. Therefore, marine aquaculture systems for example farming of seaweed, sea bass, mullets, promfrets, mud crab etc. should be adopted for achieving the United Nations agenda on sustainable development goal 14 on conservation, sustainability and use of oceans, seas and marine resources for increasing economic benefits.