Fishermen overnight returned to the sea as a nearly two-month long routine ban on fishing in Bay of Bengal to allow marine fishes proper breeding was exhausted early Thursday, officials and people concerned said.
They said that the fishermen in Bhola and other coastline districts left their home and sailed in the sea with their fishing gears, including nets as the temporary prohibition period was ended.
Bhola鈥檚 district fisheries officer Biswajit Kumar Deb told BSS that the government imposed a 58-day fishing ban in the Bay of Bengal on April 15 for proper breeding, production, preservation and collection of marine fisheries.
鈥楾he government provided 78-kg rice to each fisherman under the Vulnerable Group Feeding programme during the prohibition period,鈥� he said.
He said that the number of sea-bound fishermen alone in Bhola was around 65,000. But different associations representing the fishermen that at least 1,00,000 people in the district fish in the sea as means of their livelihood and all of them deserved the assistance.
Bangladesh Navy and Bangladesh Coast Guard extended their hands to the department of fisheries to enforce the ban and conduct joint drives against the fishing of all sorts of fishes in the sea.