SUNDERBANS, 9 JUNE: Fishermen of the Sunderbans, who have lost their livelihood after cyclone Aila, are now becoming more dependent on forest products like honey and timber. The marooned residents will also now go in for crab catching, fishing in the creeks and enter the restricted areas, feel forest officials.

Wildlife experts feel that the lack of livelihood resources could increase incidents of poaching in the Sunderbans as people will be left with few options. When the water level starts receding from the island region, the have-nots in the Sunderbans will started entering the forest territories in search of livelihood.

This will largely disturb the Sunderbans biosphere that harbours rare animals like the estuarine crocodile, fishing cat and Gangetic dolphin, said Mr Pranabesh Sanyal, former director of the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. The impact of Aila on pisciculture and 35 per cent of the Sunderbans residents, who were directly affected by it, was so huge that the experts are yet to ascertain the extent of damage.

Sweet water fish have died after saline water inundated the ponds and the possibility of fish cultivation in those areas is remote, feel the experts. According to a senior officer of the state fisheries department, the damage caused by Aila on pisciculture in the state was estimated at over Rs 139 crore, but the maximum damage was reported from South 24 Parganas.

Both sweet water and saline water fish were killed and even the infrastructure ~ boat nets, fishermen huts, prawn culture centres, breeding centres were destroyed.

“There is no seed of the major carps left so we cannot start pisiculture after the monsoon. If the entire water recedes before monsoon, there would be a possibility of change in the salinity level of the pond water during the monsoon and pisiculture could be introduced if seeds are supplied,” lamented Mr Gobinda Mirdha, a fisherman of Jamespur. “Since past few years we are experiencing shortage of coastal fishes, which were abundant before”, said another fisherman.

Traditional fishermen say the recent change in habitat of the coastal fish is due to rise in temperature of sea water near the coast. Lack of rainfall and rise in temperature increases salinity and temperature of sea water near the coast. They also alleged that during monsoon, they were not allowed to catch fish in the rivers for about 75-90 days. As it was the breeding time of the fishes, forest officials do not issue boat licence certificates to fishermen in the fishing range area.

Ms Madhumita Mukherjee, director of state fisheries department admitted that fishermen in this area are the worst sufferers. “In Aila, canal fisheries, fingerling cultivation centres, seed breading centre were damaged and even some places are still under 3-4 feet water, so introduction of pisiculture would be though task for us”, said Ms Mukherjee.

She further added that on 12 June a meeting would be held at Pailan Research Institute which would take up the issue of reintroducing pisiculture in Sunderbans.