According to the report from Aquaculture Industry, Bangladesh, located in South Asia, has hundreds of criss-cross river system, spreading all over the rivers, canal,
depression, pond, lake and hirst, owing inland water source up to 4.7 million hectare. In the meantime, the marine fishery resources of Bangladesh is also abundant, including 166,000km2 National EEZ (exclusive economic zone). Moreover, its unique climate can provide condition that is abound in gifts of nature for aquaculture and fishing industry resource administration, especially the bay of Bengal located in the southern part of the country, which has just two month winter duration. Generally speaking, the temperature always changes from 7 Celsius to 40 Celsius, and the amount of precipitation varies from 1170mm to 4300mm.
Overview of Bangladesh Fishery
With the plentiful fishery resources, Bangladesh region has a great variety of fresh water and marine fishes and shrimps, including 795 native species and 12 imported species. Besides, from 2014 FAO Fishery & Aquaculture Bangladesh profile, it also has 10 pearl mussel, twelve edible Chelonian, fifteen crab and three different lobster. Fishery accounted for 3.8% of whole Bangladesh GDP, as 22.76% of total GDP in agriculture. In 2011 – 2012, its all quantity of aquatic products was 3.26 million tons, and the aquatic products exported foreign exchange earning accounted for 2.46% of total foreign exchange receipt in the whole nation. Not only that, fishery industry also provided about 60% animal protein consumption of the country, and directly or indirectly supplied aquaculture industry related work for almost 11% population of Bangladesh.
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FAO Fisheries & Aquaculture Statistics |
1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
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PRODUCTION(thousand tons)
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647 | 846.1 | 1661.4 | 3035.1 | 3124.7 | 3261.8 |
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Inland
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522.4 | 565.2 | 1240.6 | 2302.4 | 2433.3 | 2532.4 |
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Marine
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124.6 | 281 | 420.7 | 732.7 | 691.4 | 729.4 |
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TRADE(USD million)
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Import
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0.1 | 0 | 3.2 | 17.4 | 21.9 | – |
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Export
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42.7 | 167.1 | 342.6 | 497 | 588.3 | – |
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EMPLOYMENT(thousands)
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1082.1 | 1196 | 4070.5 | 4586.1 | 4586.1 | 4586.1 |
Fishery Resources and Production
According to water area, Bangladesh fishery production can be divided into two types – inland fishery production and marine fishery production. According to production mode, its fishery production can be divided into inland fishery (open water), marine fishery and aquaculture (closed water).
²Inland fishery
Inland water area contains pond, river, stream outlet, wet land, bench land, moor, crescent lake and brackish water, etc. There are about 260 types fish and 24 kinds shrimp.
In early 1960s, inland fishery resource contributed almost 90% of fishery full production capacity of this country, while with the rapid development of aquaculture, fishery output of open water area has slow growth, and currently, there are only 29% fishery yield coming from inland open water area. But as the below figure shows, Bangladesh, one of the major producers in inland waters capture production, still plays a significant part in the world inland fishery.
²Marine fishery
With the affluent marine water resources, Bangladesh Department of Fisheries has evaluated its fishery resource to make sure the maximum sustainable earnings, and deployed vessels with tracing and monitoring system. Moreover, it owns the largest mangrove protection zone (covering an area of 6,000km2 land in its territory) that not only benefits abundant fishery and other nature resources but also acts an important role in shrimp or fish seedlings growing and breeding base. In order to manage reeves shad industry better, its Department of Fisheries made a series rules: to build five reeves shad protection zone in main breeding sites within the scope of 7,000km2; to set state-level reeves shad protection week in March per year; to carry out parent fish protection at nesting season in October; to strictly limit the mesh size and device type of shad capture; to provide food, financial and ancillary revenue project support for fishermen during forbidden fishing season.
²Aquaculture industry
Dated from 1970s, Bangladesh fishery, especially aquaculture has owned over eight hundred private hatcheries, 11,000 private nurseries and about 125 state-owned fry breeding field (76 hatcheries). The main varieties in hatchery breeding contains chub, grass carp, bighead, black carp, cyprinoid, catfish, gourami and so forth. With the improved extensive form and semi-intensive breeding as two main breeding types, its average output of pond culture is about 4,115kg/hm². In 2011-2012, its total yield of shrimps was almost 252 thousand tons. From 2014 World Fishery and Aquaculture Report lunched by FAO, the gross amount of Bangladesh aquatic products has risen to 3.5 million tons (including around 2 million tons aquaculture products) from 0.75 million tons nearly thirty years ago, ranking the forth largest fish producing country. Besides, according to the news from Department of Fisheries, the annual average growth speed of aquaculture has exceeded 25% in the past five years, and now its annual average aquaculture yield has reached 500 billion Taka.
²Open water area management
In order to protect the nature breeding ground of Cyprinidae fish and other juvenile fish, the Department of Fishery has adopted a series of measures, such as restoring Halda River, building a set of natural resources integrated management system, protecting biological diversity, and maintaining residents livelihood of wet land and bench land with the help of projects development, etc. Meanwhile, they have also taken a range of manual intervention steps so as to prevent aquaculture ecosystem especially fish and other aquatic biodiversity in open water from degeneration, for example, building refuge and habitat protection for fishes. Over the past 5 years, they have built 566 fish refuges in different water areas, which made the fishery production of these water areas get sustainable improvement. On the other hand, river, backwater and water channel at low-lying place has also been excavated again and again, aiming at making sure breeding migration of fish at breeding period.
Fish and Fish Products Export Situation
Survey shows there are 162 aquatic product processing plants, thereinto, 74 plants has won permission from European Union. At the same time, HACCP(Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) has also been introduced into fish processing plants to ensure food security. The major importing market of Bangladesh fishery contains European countries, America and Japan, and total import shares of these three countries account for 98% of its total fishery export volume, and the rest parts are mainly exported to Southeast Asia and Middle East. Besides, its main exporting aquatic products contain: frozen shrimp, PUD and P&D prawn, iced fresh, frozen reeves shad, dried fish, fresh fish, sea eel, crab, bit fish and shrimp products with additional value and so on.
Key Influence Prospect Forecast of Bangladesh Fishery Industry
For the sake of increasing the exporting earnings of aquatic products, Bangladesh government also encourages fish farmers to introduce the advanced fish feeding technology and scientific & nutritional fish feed formula, and import high-performance fish feed making machine so as to enhance the productivity, 
raise the production and satisfy market demands. From the report of Intrafish on August 23rd, Bangladesh plans to invest 41.4 million dollars for 2016-2017 fishery projects (around 20 relevant development projects to be estimated), aiming at promoting fishery industry development and make its yield up to 450 thousand tons till 2021. As the leading professional fish feed production line and fish feed making machine manufacturer, FANWAY Fish Feed Machinery has also contributed and will continue to contribute its share to the Bangladesh fishery development via providing a series of high quality but low cost fish feed pellet making machines to its fish farmers and feed plants.
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