Fisheries resources of Bangladesh: Present status and future direction Md. Mostafa Shamsuzzaman a, b, * , Mohammad Mahmudul Islam b , Nusrat Jahan Tania a , Md. Abdullah Al-Mamun c , Partho Protim Barman b , Xiangmin Xu a a Environmental & Resources Protection Law, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China b Department of Coastal and Marine Fisheries, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet 3100, Bangladesh c Department of Fisheries, Marine Fisheries Office, Chittagong 4100, Bangladesh article info Article history: Received 4 October 2016 Received in revised form 2 March 2017 Accepted 28 March 2017 Available online xxx Keywords: Inland fishery Aquaculture Coastal and marine Export and import Regulations Bangladesh abstract Bangladesh is considered one of the most suitable regions for fisheries in the world, with the world's largest flooded wetland and the third largest aquatic biodiversity in Asia after China and India. This paper reviews the performance of fisheries in Bangladesh using data collected from the Bangladesh Depart- ment of Fisheries, and related un-published grey literatures. The findings within describe recent growth within Bangladeshi inland fisheries, primarily in the inland aquaculture sector (2014e2015). This in- crease in the aquaculture production has been made possible with the implementation of scientific and technological modernization. From 2000 and 2016, aquaculture production increased from 712,640 and 2,060,408 metric t, a much larger quantity than wild capture production (1.023 million t) in 2016. There has also been a recent increase in the value of fishery exports, with more than US $34.08 billion in 2010 rising to more than US $46.60 billion in 2015. However, fisheries production is well below production targets despite the large gains seen in the aquaculture sector. © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Shanghai Ocean University. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction Bangladesh, with its rich inland waters and river systems, has significant capture fishery and aquaculture potential. The favorable geographic position of Bangladesh comes with a large number of aquatic species and provides plenty of resources to support fish- eries potential. Fish is a popular complement to rice in the national diet, giving rise to the adage Maache-Bhate Bangali (“a Bengali is made of fish and rice”)(Ghose, 2014). The fisheries can broadly be classified into three categories: inland capture fisheries, inland aquaculture and marine fisheries, of which the inland aquaculture sector is contributing more than 55% of the total production (DoF, 2016). The fisheries sector plays a very important role in the na- tional economy, contributing 3.69% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country and 22.60% to the agricultural GDP (FRSS, 2016). Over the last 10 years (2004-05 to 2013-14 FY), the fish- eries growth was fairly steady and at an average of 5.38% per year (FRSS, 2015). This sector experienced more or less consistent growth rate, ranging from 7.32% growth in 2009-2010 to 4.04% growth in 2013-2014 (Bangladesh Economic Review, 2014). More than 2% of Bangladeshi export value comes from the inland fish- eries sector. Given proper government support, the fisheries sector has ample potential in creating various types of ancillary industries in rural areas that often have a high rate of economic return. These employment opportunities for poor rural citizens would also stem their migration to urban areas. Fish supplements about 60% of Bangladeshi people’s daily animal protein intake (DoF, 2016). More than 17 million people including about 1.4 million women depend on fisheries sector for their livelihoods through fishing, farming, fish handling, and processing (BFTI, 2016, p. 1215). A different sur- veys revealed that more than 80% of laborers engaged in the fish processing industries were women (DoF, 2015). Bangladeshi has one of the biggest and most active deltas, fed by three mighty rivers: the Padma, the Meghna and the Jamuna. This contributes to a high potential for fresh and brackish water capture and culture fisheries, in addition to the vast marine resources. Despite Bangladesh's long coastline and large freshwater and ma- rine water bodies, fisheries are underdeveloped compared to other industry sectors. Inland fisheries production has escalated over the years, but the productivity per hectare water area is not yet attained at its optimum. In recent years, the bulk of the production has been obtained from marine (16.78%) and freshwater (83.22%) wild cap- ture fisheries. In 2015e2016, Bangladesh was the 5 th in world * Corresponding author. Environmental & Resources Protection Law, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China. E-mail address: sakilimsf@gmail.com (Md.M. Shamsuzzaman). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Aquaculture and Fisheries journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/ aquaculture-and-fisheries/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aaf.2017.03.006 2468-550X/© 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Shanghai Ocean University. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/). Aquaculture and Fisheries xxx (2017) 1e12 Please cite this article in press as: Shamsuzzaman, M. M., et al., Fisheries resources of Bangladesh: Present status and future direction, Aquaculture and Fisheries (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aaf.2017.03.006