Our video and visual guides facilitate intergenerational learning among fishers about the best practices to handle and release sawfish incidentally caught in the fishing net.
Sawfish is globally one of the most threatened marine species. They are naturally slow breeders. And, the degradation of their coastal and marine habitats and fisheries bycatch has accelerated the sawfish population’s decline. With their rostrum, sawfishes are more likely to get caught in fishing nets, particularly gillnets.
To ensure effective conservation, we must facilitate intergenerational learning in the fishing communities about the best practices to handle and release sawfish incidentally caught in the fishing net. And this video guide perfectly does just that.
This video is narrated in the Chittagonian language, the mother tongue of people on the east coast of Bangladesh. Another version is available narrated in a local dialect spoken and understood by people on the central coast.
Because fishers do not have good access to reliable internet, we primarily distribute this video via offline methods, such as making it available in the telecom shops in coastal areas, the kind of shops where fishers download entertainment media to their phones.
Before releasing the video, we have started to disseminate visual guidebooks among artisanal and commercial fishers in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, to help them release sawfish.
The guidebooks have been developed based on fishers’ knowledge and best practices from around the world.
Production: Mohammad Arju
Voice: Enamul Mazid Khan Siddique
Edit: Nasib Ahsan
Illustration: Bazlur Rashid Shawon, Fahmida Khalique Nitu, Hrifat Mollik, Anika Tabassum