Hilsa is everywhere in Bangladesh. It’s on dinner tables, in markets, in poetry, in history, in culture. It is also the backbone of the country’s largest fishery, and it feeds millions. The hilsa industry supports 2.5 million people and brings in over 3 billion dollars a year and it makes up 12 percent of the country’s total fish catch. However, these numbers only tell part of the story. Behind them is a fishery that almost collapsed. Years of overfishing and habitat loss pushed hilsa to the edge.  

How Hilsa Nearly Disappeared

By the late 1990s, hilsa stocks were crashing. Fishers were catching juveniles before they had a chance to spawn, decimating future generations of fish. Overfishing, habitat degradation, and unchecked exploitation had turned abundance into scarcity. The government, imposed bans, created sanctuaries, and rolled out compensation schemes. This slowed the decline, but it didn’t reverse it. Enforcement was inconsistent, buy-in was low, and most critically, the people whose lives depended on hilsa weren’t part of the decision-making.  

WorldFish in partnership with the Department of Fisheries (DoF) took a different approach. The idea was simple. When incentives are combined with enforcement, fishers take an active role in conservation. When they see a way to keep fishing for years to come, they make choices that sustain the resource.