Factors influencing biodiversity of fish and prawn in Boro Beel, Pabna Bangladesh

Floodplain lakes (locally known as Beel) fisheries of Bangladesh are an important source of animal protein and livelihoods of their rural people living adjacent to those floodplains. The extreme population density of Bangladesh puts major pressures on the beel resources, directly through resources over-exploitation. These overexploited beel fisheries needs closer examination for sustainable management of natural fishery resources. Considering the importance of biodiversity, the present study was conducted in Boro beel to identify the fishers and gears including assess their catch composition and fish and prawn biodiversity. Boro beel is located at Faridpur Upazila under Pabna district. It is a open beel. Forty different types of fishing gear of four categories (nets, traps wounding gear and others gears) were used by two categorized fishers in the beel.  Nets are the dominating fishing gear in the beel followed by traps and wounding gears. Species richness of fish and prawn was 38 species and it varied in different gears types using different fishers. The maximum number (70 species) of fish and prawn species was found in the catches of nets followed by traps (57%) and while lowest biodiversity caught in wounding gears (42%). Full-time fishers catch more species (72 species) than Part-time (50 species) fishers. Study revealed that full time fishers contributed highest in terms of both abundance in numbers (%) and weight (%) were 60.6% and 48.1% respectively. In the nets catches, abundance of in fish and prawn was 54.7% in numbers and 41.3% in weight. The findings of this study are expected to provide baseline information on fish biodiversity in the catch of fishers for sustainable use of beel fisheries resources through community management approach.