RAJSHAHI, Apr 03 (BSS): A sanctuary is helping protect and conserve small indigenous fish species from further depletion in the Padma river and its tributaries.
Shafiul Alam Mukta, a fisherman of Pirijpur village under Godagari upazila, along with his friend Sharat Chandra initiated the sanctuary near his village in 2014 and attained success within couple of years.
Forty young men of the area extended their hands and now, within just two years of starting of the project on an experimental basis, Mr Mukta has now established a large fish sanctuary in the river Padma.
They motivated local fishermen abstaining from fishing of any sort of fish from that captive water body for eight months.
With the banning of catching fish from the sanctuary for eight months, a large number of fish of various local species bred there and fishermen of adjacent water bodies started to catch varieties of endangered and rare species of fish from there.
Talking to the news agency on Wednesday, Mr Mukta said fishing at the sanctuary with net is prohibited but one can catch fish there by using a fishing rod or fishing wheel.
"So far, 85 native fish species have been found at the sanctuary of Mukta," said Naimul Haque, Assistant Fisheries officer of Godagari upazila. There are also a large number of hilsa fish as well. Moreover the fish species which were supposed to be extinct from the region for a long time were also seen to roam at the sanctuary.
Mr Mukta is now very happy over his cage fish farming as it changed his fate and made him self-reliant.
"I have sold 30,000 kgs of fish produced from 37 cages and got profit Tk 0.3 million," he said.
Many more youths of the village got profit after being farmed of fish in cage in the nearby Padma River.
Mukta said: "We have a 20-member cooperative society named 'Padma Fish Care' in Pirijpur village.
To make the sanctuary effective, cage fish farming had been launched there. In May last year, the Department of Fisheries first gave them 20 cages and later added twenty more.
The department also provided them with fingerlings of monosex tilapia for rearing in the cages initiating cage fish farming in the river for the first time. Number of cages has now been stood to over 50.
Prof Bidhan Chandra Das of the Department of Zoology in Rajshahi University said Padma feeds water to its 27 branches and tributaries and a lot of rare and endangered fish stocks are being released there from this sanctuary in Godagari.
He mentioned the encouraging youths were working for fish sanctuary without any monetary benefit.
They do not have any income from the fish sanctuary.
Cage culture has bright prospects of yielding around 10,000 tonnes of additional fishes valued at around Tk 1.50 billion only in the region annually.
A farmer can easily get neat profit worth Tk 35,000 with primary investment of Tk 0.4 million in every month, Prof Bidhan Das added.
Referring to his personal experience Shafiul Mukta said there is an excellent opportunity of establishing cage fish culture on 30 km water areas there with employment scope of more than 10,000 people side by side with boosting significant fish production.
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