Rain and Rough Seas Hit Thousands of Fishers at Dublar Char on the First Day of the Season, Disrupting Dried-Fish Production

Fishers on the Sundarbans coast of the Bay of Bengal have run into stormy weather as soon as the fishing and dried-fish season began. Continuous rain under the influence of a low-pressure system and a rough sea are disrupting fishing.

On Friday, 30 October, the first day of the season, heavy rainfall in and around Dublar Char left several thousand fishers and fish workers in trouble.

Their seasonal livelihoods have been thrown into uncertainty because they cannot go to sea to fish, cannot build new houses and dried-fish structures, and cannot dry fish for lack of sun.

Alongside the fishers' likely financial losses, there are also fears about whether the Sundarbans forest division will reach its revenue target.

Forest Ranger Khalilur Rahman, the officer in charge of the Dublar Char fishers' village, said heavy rainfall has been falling in the Dublar Char area since Thursday night. Because of it, he said, the fishers who came here at the start of the season are being obstructed in fishing and in building new houses to live in.

Fishers say that every year, around the dried-fish season, thousands of fishers and fish workers from various coastal areas of the country gather on different chars in the Sundarbans, including Dublar Char, Alorkol and Meher Ali.

Their fishing and dried-fish work runs from late October to March. At the start of the season they reach the chars with the equipment they need and build temporary dwellings, racks for drying fish and other structures. This year, hostile weather at the very start is obstructing all those preparations.

The fishers said rain began on Thursday night. As it continued on Friday, their work to build new houses and prepare the infrastructure for making dried fish was disrupted.

At the same time, many fishers could not go into the deep sea to fish because of the rough sea. Some fished close to the coast but could not dry that fish for lack of sun. As a result, normal fishing and dried-fish production have been disrupted at the very start of the season.

The burden of loans has made the situation more worrying for the fishers. Many came to Dublar Char after taking dadon advances and loans from moneylenders to cover the cost of fishing and dried-fish making for the season.

They had expected to fish from the start of the season, make dried fish, sell it and repay their loans from that income. But being unable to go fishing in the hostile weather and the halt to fish-drying work have put their investment at risk. If the weather does not turn favourable, they may face a crisis in repaying loans as well as a fall in income. Fishers who came with advances and loans from moneylenders are also worried about meeting their families' expenses.

The fishers' main hope of livelihood is fish from the sea. Their situation is also described in terms of worry, over the five-month season, about catching enough fish and repaying loans after making up for pirate extortion and natural-disaster losses.

The Forest Department, meanwhile, has set a revenue target of Tk 8 crore for this dried-fish season. It is feared that if the fishers' fishing and dried-fish production fall, there could also be a negative impact on the Forest Department's revenue collection.