CULTURE AND CAPTURE FISHERY OF BEEL DAKATIA, KHULNA

Abstract

A survey on culture and capture fishery was conducted at Beel Dakatia of Khulna district. Total area of the Beel Dakatia was 28328 acres and persons were found to live around the beel is about 135,000 of which 3.97% were directly and 19.87% were indirectly involved in aquaculture. While about 0.2% people were directly and about 1% were indirectly involved in the capture fishery. The land use distribution was 52% for aquaculture, 31% for housing, 9.83% for agriculture, 2.56% for capture fishery, 0.61% as marshland and 4% for community utilities.  Mainly two culture systems namely integrated culture and poly culture were followed. Of the people involved in aquaculture, 93% farmers practiced integrated culture while 7% practiced poly culture. The average production of prawn and fish in poly culture was found to be 225 and 95 kg/acre, respectively. In integrated culture yields were 198 and 83 kg/ acre, respectively. In case of integrated culture, paddy and other vegetables were also produced along with prawn and fishes. Average production of paddy in integrated culture was found to be 1560 kg/ acre. Net profits per acre from integrated and poly culture were 59673 and 51022 Tk, respectively. In capture fishery 41 species of fish and 3 species of prawn were harvested. Culture fishery included only 8 species of fish and one species of prawn. Three types of craft (boat, nouka; small boat, donga and raft, vella), five types of gear (cast net, khapla jal; drug net, tana jal; current net, current jal; gill net, fash jal and push net, thela jal), six types of trap (basket trap, ghuni; box trap, vair; basket trap, chonga, basket trap, polo; basket trap, tubo and bitte) and five types of hook and spear (chip-borshi, borshi, fulkuchi, jhupi and konch) were used in the capture fishery while only tana jal and khapla jal were used in aquaculture for harvesting fish. It was revealed that agriculture and capture fishery area is decreasing rapidly with increasing aquaculture activities. Over all livelihood status of the people in Beel Dakatia was observed improving day by day with the increase of aquaculture activities.