The history of dried fish with its significance in the Bengal area starts from the medieval era. Dried fish got to India via the port cities such as Bombay, Visakhapatnam and Chennai by the inter-state and intra-state trades with the railways in the mid-19th century. Popularly known as ‘Shutki’, dried fish is emblematic to the cultural oneness of (dis)integrated Bengal wherein Bengalis either relished dried fish with uncompromising endearment or rejected it because of the repugnant odor of a decaying fish.
The scoping research focused on two coastal districts of West Bengal: South 24 Parganas and East Medinipur.
Key findings
Small-scale fishers and labourers from neighbouring villages convene to work at camps known as “shabars”. Workers at these camps come from diverse social backgrounds. Women at these camps are often engaged through exploitative “no-work-no-pay” contracts and do not receive additional payment for overtime labour.
At Fraserguni – women workers are sorting fishes. Source: Raktima Ghosh
The Egra market in East Medinipur is the largest dried fish market of West Bengal. Consumers prefer unsalted dried fish, and they are willing to pay for hygienically prepared dried fish with desirable features.
The makeshift practices of fish drying have resulted in a condition of “making a living in transience” which necessitates ongoing adaptations. Socially and culturally significant events are focal points in the system of dry fish production, despite not being recognized by the formal administrative and legal systems.
While there is documented evidence that indigenous fish species are in decline due to commercial overfishing and unsustainable processing, the onus is borne by artisanal small-scale fishers, who face legal barriers, challenges and often outright prohibition of their established practices.
Fish drying arrangements at Baliara shabar in Frasergunj village, Indian Sundarbans. The Ganga temple is socially and territorially a part of the shabar. Source: Raktima Ghosh.
Land tenure is a dominant concern for dried fish producers in West Bengal.
Recommendations
The report recommends co-management, co-monitoring, and partnership as imperatives within formal dried fish management to generate species recovery and enhance sustainability of the dried fish system. The authors also advise an Interactive Governance approach to effectively identify and support opportunities in the dried fish sector of West Bengal.
Reference
Ghosh, Raktima, Jenia Mukherjee, Amrita Sen, Souradip Pathak, Anuradha Choudry, and Shreyashi Bhattacharya. 2022. “Dried Fish in West Bengal, India: Scoping Report.” DFM Working Papers. The University of Manitoba & Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.
Team IIT Kharagpur and Sundarban Jana Sramjibi Manch (SJSM) in conversation with inhabitants of Tipligheri village (Gosaba block) during their January field visit at the Sundarbans.
Retailer selling multiple varieties of dried fish in Mon State
The patterns of dried fish consumption in Myanmar varies across the country in terms of types and quantity of products. Regardless of their importance as a source of human nutrition and cultural value, there have been no dedicated studies of dried fish consumption in the country. Thus, the DFM Myanmar team consisting of Ben Belton, and Network Activities Group NAG conducted a study of dried fish consumption in Myanmar especially in the areas where NAG offices are located between October 2019 and March 2020.
The study areas cover the three geographical zones of Myanmar, the Delta and Coastal Region, the Dry Zone, and the Hill. The Delta and Coastal Region includes Ayeyarwady, Yangon and Bago regions and Mon State.
Map of surveyed townships
Key findings
Almost every respondent household (94%) except in Northern Shan had consumed at least one type of fresh or processed fish at least once in the last seven days.
Processed fish was slightly more likely to be consumed than fresh fish across seven of the eight surveyed states and regions.
The most consumed fish product was fermented fish products followed by dried fish and dried shrimp, and they were the most frequently consumed. Nga-pi-yay (liquid fish paste) is the most eaten fermented fish product, particularly in the Delta and Coastal Region.
Dried fish were the second most common category of processed fish product consumed, and 45 species of dried fish were identified. Many respondents reported being unable to identify the species.
Average annual per capita ‘dried fish’ consumption (in the broad sense, including all aquatic animal products processed to aid preservation at ambient temperatures) was consistently high, ranging from 13.2-16.4 kg in Delta and Coastal, Mandalay and Kayin, and 8 kg in Sagaing, but only 2 kg/capita in Shan North.
The study is the first ever dedicated large-scale survey of dried fish consumption habits in Myanmar. It reveals numerous important insights into role and significance of dried fish consumption in the country, which might be missed or underreported when using less specialized survey instruments, with important implications for the design of future surveys.
Reference
Lin, Si Thu, Ben Belton, and Wae Win Khaing. 2022. “Myanmar Dried Fish Consumption Survey.” Dried Fish Matters.
Microplastics are carried into the Bay of Bengal by three major riverine systems, which carry contaminants from hundreds of rivers originating in Bangladesh and neighbouring countries. These plastics are also introduced through the breakdown of fishing lines and nets that have been lost at sea, which are driven to shallow coastal waters through ocean currents. Improper disposal of plastic waste along the popular tourist beaches of Cox’s Bazar and Kuakata also contributes to pollution in the Bay of Bengal.
The identification of microplastics in dried Bombay duck and ribbon fish is highly troubling. These fish products are typically consumed whole, causing potentially toxic microplastics to enter the bodies of human consumers and to accumulate in their organs.
Millions of people in Bangladesh regularly consume dried fish, and the country is producing increasing quantities of plastics. Yet the effects on many millions of consumers of regularly ingesting microplastics with dried fish are unknown. Consumers in Bangladesh are largely unaware of the possible dangers, and the government has not established a system for monitoring microplastics in food products.
In light of the high levels of microplastics contamination identified in the present study, the authors recommend that the relevant ministries and government departments work together to identify long-term solutions to the potentially grave risks posed by the increasing presence of microplastics in dried fish and other food products.
Microscopic images of selected microplastics: a, b & c – fibers; d, e & f – fragments; g, h & i – films; j – microbeads; k – pellets; and l – foams.
Highlights
Microplastics (MP) were identified in the two most common marine dried fish products in Bangladesh.
High levels of MP were found in all samples of both fish species from two locations.
Fibers were the most common type of MP identified.
ATR-FTIR analysis of dried fish samples revealed polymer types of polyethylene, polystyrene and polyamide.
MP in dried fish may be transferred to the human body through consumption, with unknown health effects.
Abstract
We examined microplastics (MP) in two commercially important dried fish, Bombay duck (Harpadon nehereus) and ribbon fish (Trichiurus lepturus), collected from two sites on the Bay of Bengal (Cox’s Bazar and Kuakata). The number of MP found in dried Bombay duck and ribbon fish from Kuakata was significantly higher (41.33 g−1 and 46.00 g−1, respectively) than the MP present in samples collected from Cox’s Bazar (28.54 g−1 and 34.17 g−1, respectively). Fibers were the most common type of MP identified in all samples (41–64%), followed by fragments (22–34%), microbeads (9–16%), films (3–4%), foams (1–4%), and pellets (0–2%). ATR-FTIR analysis revealed three different types of MP polymer – polyethylene (35–45%), polystyrene (20–30%) and polyamide (30–45%) in the dried fish samples. The study confirms the presence of high MP loads in dried fish from the Bay of Bengal, with high potential of trophic transfer of MP to the human body.
Citation
Hasan, Jabed, SM Majharul Islam, Md Samsul Alam, Derek Johnson, Ben Belton, Mostafa Ali Reza Hossain, and Md Shahjahan. 2022. “Presence of Microplastics in Two Common Dried Marine Fish Species from Bangladesh.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 176: 113430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.113430
Sisir Pradhan, Prateep Nayak, and Derek Armitage advocate a conceptual departure from a neoclassical economic orientation of dried fish value chains to an emphasis on linked social-ecological systems (SES) perspective, defined as an integrated, coupled, interdependent and co-evolutionary system with mutual vertical and horizontal feedbacks between ecological and social subsystems (Berkes et al., 2003).
The conventional dried fish value chain follows a narrow neoclassical economic perspective.
It fails to factor in non-capital relations of dried fish shaped by specific histories, ecologies, people, and practices.
SES-oriented dried fish value chain (SESVC) reconceptualizes the dried fish value chain by considering fisheries resource system as a critical new node.
SESVC puts Primacy on integration of human and environmental dimensions and social well-being of upstream value chain actors.
Conceptualization of SESVC
Conceptual framework of SES oriented dried fish value chain
The figure above (fig. 5 in the published article) provides an initial hybrid and interdisciplinary conceptual framing of a SES-oriented dried fish value chain (SESVC). The framework includes several novel ideas in terms of its main components and cross-scale interactions.
First, the framework introduces the resource base or the fisheries ecosystem as a central and/or novel node in the dried fish value chain. This positioning comes at the cost of excluding the fish and the fishers. The principle that ‘if there is no fish (and its habitat) there is no dried fish’ will become a reality if we continue to exclude the resource and ecosystem node from the value chain . The resource node is fundamentally dynamic and that determines the price, product, livelihoods of resource dependent communities and the regulating framework which are critical to the functioning of the value chain.
Second, the SES value chain perspective places the producing and processing, trading, retailing, and consumer nodes from the conventional value chain along with the new resource and ecosystem node in a two-way feedback relationship. Doing so clarifies that these nodes are bound by multiple interactions across several scales and levels of the entire value chain – that they are in fact ‘co-produced’.
Third, the framework reflects a social-ecological system view of the dried fish value chain by organizing nonlinear feedback, dynamic linkages, uncertainties, and emergence as key attributes that guide the node level interactions.
Fourth, the three segments – structure, conduct and performance – of the value chain remain integral to its core and an active part of the interactive process involving the SES attributes and the five nodes
Abstract
Small-scale fisheries (SSF) support over 90% of the 120 million people engaged in fisheries globally. Dried fish is an important sub-sector of SSF, which is characterized by declining social, economic, political conditions of people involved in its production, and the ecosystems they depend on. Dried fish accounts for 12% of the total fish consumption globally but can increase up to 36% in low-income countries. About half of the people involved in dried fish production and marketing are women. The approach taken to analyse dried fish sector has so far followed a narrow subset of commodity chain approaches with a focus on financial value, transmitted in a linear ‘vertical’ fashion across value chain actors. Existing value chain approach fails to factor the non-capital relationships of dried fish that are contingent upon specific histories, ecologies, peoples, places, and the practices. The narrow neoclassical economic perspective of dried fish value chain (DFVC) also impedes appropriate responses to their unique attributes pertaining to social, ecological, institutional interactions across multiple scales. Failure to consider social-ecological system (SES) attributes, its connections and relationships with dried fish value chain not only undermine social wellbeing of upstream actors but also perpetuates social-environmental inequity and injustice. The paper offers a novel SES-oriented DFVC perspective that focuses on social wellbeing of fishers and dried fish workers. The reconceptualisation of structure, conduct and performance of DFVC is done by conducting an interdisciplinary analysis of peer-reviewed literature from SES, value chain and social wellbeing.
Citation
Pradhan, Sisir Kanta, Prateep Kumar Nayak, and Derek Armitage. 2022. “A Social-Ecological Systems Perspective on Dried Fish Value Chains.” Current Research in Environmental Sustainability 4 (January): 100128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsust.2022.100128.
Amrita discussed her ongoing research on the political ecological context of the Sundarbans, which has helped orient recent fieldwork within the Dried Fish Matters project. Her talk introduced the diverse economies of the Sundarbans – including forest fishing, honey collection, and prawn farming – and illustrated the inadequacies of attempts to govern the complex socio-political and inter-species realities of this region. Discussion after the talk focused on the complexity of the political ecological landscape of the Sundarbans, and in particular on the issue of defining rights for resource users who are positioned as “non-native”.
Amrita Sen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and a Visiting Faculty with Azim Premji University. Her research interests include cultural and political ecology, politics of forest conservation, urban environmental conflicts and Anthropocene studies. In 2019, Amrita received the “Excellence in PhD Thesis award” from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, for her doctoral research on the conservation politics in Sundarbans.
What does Blue Justice for Small-Scale Fisheries look like?
Launched in celebration of World Fisheries Day 2021, our partner TBTI Global is hosting a virtual tour that showcases the realities of small-scale fisheries from around the world.
The 19 short video case studies collected by TBTI highlight the urgency of creating a more equitable and just space for small-scale fisheries.
Dried Fish Matters is proud to be part of this initiative.
Three of our research teams – DFM West Bengal, DFYWA (Andhra Pradesh), and DFM Bangladesh – contributed images and videos from their fieldwork on dried fish value chains. These videos offer vivid documentation of dried fish processors and traders’ livelihoods, illustrating governance challenges related to social justice issues such as income insecurity, child labour, contested land tenure, and environmental change.
Dried Fish Processing in the Indian Sundarbans
Credits: Aishik Bandyopadhyay, Raktima Ghosh, Jenia Mukherjee, Amrita Sen, Anuradha Choudry, Shreyashi Bhattacharya, Swarnadeep Bhattacharjee and Souradip Pathak
The combined riparian and coastal topography of West Bengal hosts a great many varieties of fish that builds the dietary habit of her people. Fish is not only consumed in its raw, unprocessed form, but it is equally popular in its salted and unsalted dried version, enriched in nutritive elements. Traditional fish drying process involves many people who participate in different phases of the operation along the coastlines of Bengal in order to eke out their living. Apart from the market-driven value, dried fish, associates a deep sociocultural, ecological and sustenance relations with the local people of Indian Sundarbans, a part of the world’s largest delta carved by the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna river systems in combined India and Bangladesh. This video presents the story of dried fish and those who have long engaged themselves in fish drying practices at Frasergunj village of Indian Sundarbans, West Bengal.
Living on the edge: Small-scale women fish processors of northern coastal Andhra Pradesh, India
Credits: District Fishermen’s Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA)
On the Northeastern coast of Andhra Pradesh, women who process and trade in dried fish have experienced increasing hardships. With the concentration of fish trade at major harbours, women must take long journeys to do business at sites that provide no water source for drinking or washing, no toilets, and no place to rest. In the villages, urbanization and development have reduced available beach drying areas, either through direct encroachment or through erosion caused by altered landscapes. Due to the lack of secure land tenure, women are unable to invest in the maintenance or construction of fish drying infrastructure.
Child Labour in Dried Fish Processing in Bangladesh
Credits: Dried Fish Matter Bangladesh team
The use of child labour in fish processing is extremely common, in both inland and marine drying sites in Bangladesh. It is customary for children to support their parents by providing assistance in family-run drying operations, but paid work is also very common. Extremely young children may be observed conducting such work. This video presents visual documentation of child labourers at fish drying yards in Bangladesh, including Rohingya refugees and internal migrants displaced by natural disasters.
Session 3 at the IMBeR West Pacific Symposium on “Dried Small Fish: Ecology, Value Chains, and Nutrition“, hosted by DFM, was held on November 25, 11:00-14:00 UTC.
The China-Japan-Korea (CJK) IMBeR Symposium on marine ecosystem has been held eight times over the period from 2002 to 2018 to review the achievements and to set the future directions of international ecosystem research in the western North Pacific as a part of the past GLOBEC and the IMBeR regional activities. Responding to the growing needs, the CJK IMBeR community changed its name to the West Pacific Symposium to better assume for the entire West Pacific Ocean, as outlined in the IMBeR Science Plan and Implementation Strategy 2016-2025. This kick-off symposium centers around the marine biosphere and its biogeochemistry in the West Pacific Ocean from the Subarctic in the North to the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean and its connectivity with the Arctic, Southern Ocean, and the Indian Ocean to deepen a holistic hemispheric view. All marine habitats including coastal areas (estuaries, saltmarshes, coral reefs, etc.), continental shelf to the deep ocean and their seafloors are of interests. Participants in the IMBeR Regional Programmes, Working Groups, Endorsed Projects, and others are welcome to the symposium.
About this session
Dried, salted, fermented, pickled small fish, and derivative products are an important and ancient category of processed aquatic foods. They supply a concentrated source of micro-nutrients to diets of large populations in Asia, provide livelihoods to millions of small-scale fishers, processors and traders, and are a culturally significant component of Asian cuisines. The availability of small pelagic fish, such as anchovy and sardine, to producers, traders and consumers is linked with the ecology of these species. The patterns of movement of these fish species in the West Pacific and Indian oceans are increasingly shaped by human impacts (stressors) on the ocean, such as climate change. This session seeks to engage in a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary dialogue on the links among ecology, value chains and nutrition related to small fish, used for drying and other forms of processing, in rapidly changing environmental and economic contexts. Expressions of interest are invited from natural scientists working on ecology and nutrition of small fish (e.g. anchovy, sardine) in the West Pacific and Indian oceans, as well as social scientists working on dried/processed small fish value chains in East, Southeast and South Asia. Abstract selection will be guided by the openness to present within multi-disciplinary, sub-regional groups.
Keynote title: Aquatic Foods for Nourishing the West Pacific
Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted is the Global Lead for Nutrition and Public Health at WorldFish, a One CGIAR entity. She was awarded the 2021 World Food Prize for her ground-breaking research, critical insights, and landmark innovations in developing holistic, nutrition-sensitive approaches to aquatic food systems, including aquaculture and capture fisheries. She was awarded the 2021 Arrell Global Food Innovation Award for research innovation. She played a key role in the development of the WorldFish 2030 research and innovation strategy: Aquatic Foods for Healthy People and Planet. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and Vice Chair of the UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Action Track 4 – Advance Equitable Livelihoods, and also a Food Systems Champion. She plays a pivotal role in promoting aquatic food systems for nourishing nations and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Shakuntala holds a PhD from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (presently: Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen), Denmark. She also holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Co-moderators
Nireka Weeratunge, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka
Nireka Weeratunge is a Research Fellow at the International Centre of Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Colombo, Sri Lanka and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (IMBeR). She collaborates on the research project ‘Dried Fish Matters: Mapping the Social Economy of Dried Fish in South and Southeast Asia for Enhanced Wellbeing and Nutrition’ with the University of Manitoba, Canada and University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, supporting gender analysis and qualitative methods. She is also the qualitative lead of the ‘Social-ecological Dynamics in Rapid Economic Development: Infrastructure and Coastal Change in Southeastern Sri Lanka’ (SEDRIC) project at ICES, led by the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. She has a PhD in anthropology from the University of Toronto, Canada with over 25 years of research and practice in the interface of gender, environment and development issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Her main areas of work are the social and cultural aspects of natural resource use, focusing on livelihood strategies in relation to poverty, vulnerability, resilience and wellbeing in fishing and farming communities. She has worked in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China (Yunan), Laos, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, Philippines and Vietnam.
Derek Johnson is Professor of socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Manitoba and Head of the Department of Anthropology. He draws particularly on environmental and economic anthropology, political ecology, and social wellbeing in his research on small-scale fisheries in Asia and Canada. Dr. Johnson leads the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded International Partnership Dried Fish Matters (www.driedfishmatters.org). Dried Fish Matters is conducting research on the social economy of dried fish in six focus countries in South and Southeast Asia.
We have reached the midpoint of our 7-year SSHRC Partnership Grant. In completing our midterm reporting exercise, we compiled some numbers about the project that are shared in the infographic below. We’re very proud of the 100+ students, collaborators, and co-investigators in our partnership, who have worked hard over the past three years to develop research on the economic, cultural, and nutritional importance of dried fish.
Despite the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DFM project has succeeded in fostering collaboration across more than 30 partner organizations. Our teams have worked together to produce, for example, a series of audiovisual documents exploring the cultural and sensorial dimensions of dried fish and have presented at virtual events including the World Ocean Week Small-Scale Fisheries Open House and the MARE “People and the Sea” Conference in 2021. Work toward a collectively authored e-book and digital humanities exhibition is currently underway.
Our primary research has produced several important findings that will guide our work in the second stage of the project. We have learned, for example, that:
Dried fish production is expanding in Sri Lanka, but corresponding investments are not being made to supply chain management or value addition.
The fishmeal industry in Karnataka is diverting fish away from human consumption, presenting a threat to food and nutrition security.
Dried fish from the Bay of Bengal is highly contaminated with microplastics.
Intergenerational transmission of female involvement in dried fish processing in Andhra Pradesh appears to have broken down.
We have also discovered evidence of the deep cultural value associated with dried, smoked, and fermented fish around the world. Our exhaustive review of the global literature on dried fish confirms that many of the challenges identified by DFM partners – notably concerning social relations, cultural value, and food and nutrition security – are severely underrepresented in both academic and applied research.
Many thanks to all our collaborators, wishing you the greatest fortune in your work in the second half of our project!
