Bangladesh lags behind neighbours in marine fishing due to lack of modern vessels, experts say

Bangladesh is lagging behind its neighbours in marine fishing due to lack of modern vessels, speakers at a seminar have noted.

Bangladeshi fishermen caught a mere 73,000 tonnes of fish last year compared to 8 million tonnes by India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand.

"Our wooden fishing trawlers can travel to maximum 30 kilometres off shore whereas we have a maritime boundary of 664km," said Khurshid Alam, secretary of foreign ministry's maritime affairs unit.

He presented the keynote paper at the seminar on blue economy in Chittagong on Saturday.

Bangladesh has established sovereign rights on over more than 118,000 sq km of maritime territory, 200 nautical miles (NM) of exclusive economic zone, and 354 NM of continental shelf through international court verdicts in the past couple of years.

It has raised hopes of extracting “plenty of resources” from the Bay of Bengal, which Bangladesh considers to be its “third neighbour”.

Bangladesh, however, lacks expertise and technology to exploit the resources.

Alam noted that lack of modern vessels and technology meant "we cannot get anything out of 600km maritime area".

At present the global fishing market is $100 billion, he said adding some of Bangladesh's neighbours caught a huge amount of fish from Bangladesh's waters.

Alam emphasised on deep sea fishing vessel and long line ship to collect fish resources.