Fish plays a major role in meeting the animal protein demand, foreign exchange earning and socioeconomic development of the rural poor by alleviating poverty through employment generation in an agrobased country like Bangladesh. Bangladesh fisheries have three sectors: inland capture, inland culture and marine capture. The inland capture fisheries exploit open water areas of rivers and their tributaries, estuaries, the Sundarban mangrove forest area, permanent wetlands called beel and seasonal flood plains. The inland culture fisheries includes production from closed water bodies such as ponds and ditches, ox-bow lakes, baor, and coastal and inland shrimp and fish farms. The marine fisheries comprise industrial and trawl fisheries and small-scale artisanal fisheries by coastal fisher communities. The total area under inland waterbodies is about 500 000 ha, of which 91 percent is open water and 9 percent closed waterbodies.
There are 265 species of freshwater finfish and 475 marine fish species reported from the country, together with 68 shrimps and prawns, 26 marine and freshwater turtles and tortoises, 24 amphibians, more than 300 molluscs, 2 crocodiles, 1 gavial, about 20 water snakes, about 182 aquatic or wetland birds, and 12 aquatic mammal species. There are 93 species of exotic fishes introduced in the country, of which 18 were introduced for culture fisheries and the rest for aquaria. Two accidental releases of alien species have been recorded so far.
Inland fisheries are the major source of fish to meet national demand. Major carps, exotic carps, catfishes, snakeheads, live fishes, hilsha fishes and small indigenous fishes are the most important fisheries in commerce, and 2005-2006 statistics show that the large and small indigenous species formed 45.43 percent of inland fish produced in the country, followed by major carps (27.59 percent), exotic carps (13.94 percent), large and small shrimps (8.81 percent) and hilsha fishes (4.23 percent). In 2005-2006, the fisheries growth rate of GDP at constant prices was 3.91 percent (based on the year 1995-1996). For 2006-2007, the expected growth rate of GDP was 3.99 percent.
(Source:FAO)
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