Shoal-shocked hilsa

STATE-UPDATE

Nothing depresses a shopper more than a season without good 'hilsa', or the Indian shad, famously bony fish with rich, smooth flesh. But that's the fate that millions and their fish sellers met in Kolkata's food markets in 2004.

That's because hilsa shoals no more swarm the seas and the rivers in and around Bengal. The few that are available are small, impossibly bony and simply not up to the connoisseur's mark.

This has led to a commercial disaster for two communities "" fishermen and fish traders. Fishermen invest around Rs 3-5 lakh in large nets to fit out the standard 10-man fishing vessel. A seven-day trip in the sea costs Rs 50,000 or so. The catch today: only Rs 60,000-Rs 70,000 for the trip. The result: few boats are being bought, and no investments in nets or storage bins are being made.

The fishmongers claim they used to handle 40 tonnes of local catch and another 50 tonnes of imports from Bangladesh till as recently as 2002-03. Today, sales volumes are down to 40 tonnes in all.

A greater disaster is that the bulk of the catch weighs around 500 grammes apiece, for which wholesalers pay a paltry Rs 100 per kg. The one kilo fish, which used to sell for Rs 200 a kg is rare; even rarer is the 1-1.5 kg type, which used to sell for Rs 190-200 per kg in wholesale markets, and Rs 230-250 kg in retail markets.

So, where has the hilsa gone?

"The monsoon was late and there was not enough sweet water flow to attract the big hilsa into the rivers," says Barun Maity, secretary of the Digha Fish Traders' Association, from a fishing town on the Bay of Bengal, 150 km south of Kolkata. Late rains have troubled the region since 2001 and spoiled the catch every year, according to him.

This year too, proper monsoons hit Bengal only on September 10-19, instead during mid-July to mid-August. The rain-fed overflowing rivers induce the hilsa to swim upstream to spawn, and they get conveniently caught in the nets.

This year, there were no rains and no hilsa, says Maity. Bangladesh reportedly got timely rains and caught a lot of hilsa, he adds. In normal years, the catch in West Bengal is 30-40 tonnes a day, but this year, it has been a quarter of that, and that too, of very small fish in the 300 gramme to 900 gramme range.

"The Bangladesh catch was big but they have buyers in the UK and other places whose prices we cannot match," admits importer Atul Das. But he puts the blame for the hilsa problem squarely on the shoulders of Indian fishermen.

"In 2002-2003, fishermen got greedy and managed to get government permission to use nets with smaller gaps, ostensibly to catch other types of fish, but actually, to catch more hilsa. This wiped out the immature fish and resulted in this disaster," he says.

"Even if there are rains, hilsa swims deep in the full rivers and local people do not have the nets to catch them," he retorts.

In defence, Maity says foreign trawlers, which fish close to the Bay of Bengal shoreline, are the ones catching the big and small hilsa, which gather there waiting for the rains to trigger their migration. The sinking of ships carrying soda and logs at the Sandheads, as the shoaling area is called, also led to pollution and diverted hilsa shoals to Bangladesh, he adds.

"The fisheries department had reported large hilsa shoals 200 km from the coast in early-July, but they did not reach West Bengal because of this, so why blame us," Maity asks. The solution according to Das: "Stop fishermen from catching immature fish by banning small nets "" only then can the slow-breeding hilsa revive." Needless to say, the likes of Maity would rather drown than accept this.

Interestingly, tradition imposes a 'no-hilsa' phase every year to help the fish recover. Few families eat hilsa from 'arandhan', a religious practice observed in mid-September, to Shree Panchami in mid-February. Perhaps only the wisdom of generations past can save the hilsa today.