Conservation & Communities

[Rishi]

Crabbing in Sundarbans

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A great hunt is underway for the Mudcrabs in the Sundarban, world largest mangrove forest.

A another scavenger in the forest, but the mudcrabs flesh fetch good money & lack of employment opportunities is pushing fishermen in West Bengal’s Sundarban to the risky - often fatal - business of catching crabs in the core areas of the tiger reserve. The severity of the situation comes to the fore of one takes a look at the frequency of fatal tiger attacks in the end of 2019, as at least 6 people perished due to tiger attacks in the last 6 months. According to locals the lucrative market price of crabs in the domestic and international market are pushing the fishermen to crab catching, a much more dangerous job that you'd have to do on foot washing in shallow waters.
Sources in the Forest Department said that majority of the fishermen enter the core area without permission from the state authorities.

On the Bangladeshi side, there's not even any regulation. The crab-catchers simply need to go in with a permit from Forest Department and collect literally whatever they can get. Much of it is unprotected & accessible to all.

Forest Department officials said that despite repeatedly cautioning fishermen, imoposing hefty fines on them and even temporarily seized their boats for entering the core area without permission, the trend of entering the core area for crab catching has not died down yet. Despite most of them having been in listed on MGNREGA job schemes, people are risking their lives for better money.

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In 2009 Cyclone Alia broke embankments & flooded the fields, making them saline, most residents turned to prawn cultivation following the trend since the late 1970s across much of coastal Bangladesh.
Fuelled entirely by overseas demand, particularly from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan etc. thelis practice has caught on though not being in huge demand locally & are cultivated solely for export.

Some units of the local authority are coming up with farming of mangrove mudcrabs & saltwater tiger-prawns as a solution. But fisheries in the area is mostly done by trapping flood water in embankments on which used to agricultural fields.

But this is coming at the cost of the regional soil salinity & Sundarban's ecosystem. Mud crab farming is still dependent on wild resources though some hatcheries have recently been established. In addition, prematurely gathering crabs that have not reached their adult age for fattening has contributed to the depletion of adult crabs as breeders.

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After one cultivate prawns in a field for a few years, it becomes so saline that it is only fit for growing crabs.
Some villagers say those shallow ponds of depths of two-three feet become unsuitable for cultivating anything else once mud crabs are grown for a few years because the soil becomes exceedingly saline, too salty even for brackish water shrimps.

Most of the studies done on prawn and crab fisheries are socio-economic in nature and there is more research needed to say for sure that shrimp and crab aquaculture leads to increased salinity, according to Pavel Partha the Coordinator, Diversity, Interdependency and Pluralism at non-profit development organisation called Bangladesh Resource Center for Indigenous Knowledge or BARCIK that works with local communities to incorporate indigenous knowledge and local practices into contemporary development interventions.
“What is certain, however, is that these recent changes in farming practices are having an impact on the local mangrove ecosystem,” Partha said. “The extent of impact can only be ascertained through detailed scientific research.” Reply