Bangladesh has huge territory in oceans but most of its marine resources remained untapped for long due to inadequate data and manpower, lack of coordination among stakeholders and lower investment, insiders said.
The country is currently involved in fishing with conventional trawlers only in shallow depth offshore areas and the annual output is only around 110,000 tonnes of sea fish.
It is yet to discover any hydrocarbon reserve in offshore areas although the neighbouring India and Myanmar have long been producing natural gas from their offshore blocks.
The commercial production of valuable minerals from seabed is still a far cry.
Bangladesh has territorial rights of up to 200 nautical miles from shore as exclusive economic zone in the Bay of Bengal.
Besides, the country has free access to around 387 nautical miles into deep sea following demarcation of maritime boundary by international court of arbitration.
But the country's fishing trawlers are currently fishing haphazardly in up to 100 nautical miles areas in sea from shore meaning some 487 nautical miles area remained untapped.
State-owned Petrobangla could award only one offshore block in deep sea to Posco Daewoo in March 2017 to carry out hydrocarbon exploration in DS-12 block following the settlement of dispute with Myanmar and India.
Although two shallow water blocks-SS-04 and SS-09 -- were awarded in February 2014 and one -SS-11 -in March 2014, not a single well is yet to be drilled, said a senior Petrobangla official.
Petrobnagla could not assign any party to carry out non-exclusive multi-client seismic survey to have primary data on oil and gas resource potentials in the Bay over the past one decade, he said.
The government in January 2017 established 'Blue Economy Cell (BEC)" under the Energy and Mineral Resources Division of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources to harness the country's sea resources.
Some 26 potential sectors were also identified by the government for the development of the blue economy.
The sectors are shipping, coastal shipping, seaports, passenger ferry services, inland waterway transports, shipbuilding, ship recycling industries, fishery, aquaculture, marine culture, and marine biotechnology.
Oil and gas, sea salt production, ocean renewable energy, tidal energy, blue energy (osmosis) and biomass, aggregate mining, marine mineral mining, coastal tourism, recreational water sports, yachting and marines, cruise tourism, coastal protection or artificial islands, greening coastal belts, human resource development, marine surveillance and marine special planning are also included.
The Cell was established to harness the potentials of these sectors.
"But the Cell has no authority to integrate and regulate ocean-related jobs of different ministries," additional secretary of the Cell Golam Shafiuddin said.
Although the BEC has been trying to coordinate ocean-related projects of 17 different ministries to harness the resources of the sea, the success is not at the satisfactory level, he said.
The BEC is now only working as a temporary cell without having any separate budget, he said.
The Cell neither has any sufficient manpower nor it has any specific organogram, said the BEC top brass.
"Although there was a move to constitute a Blue Economy Authority to streamline sea-related work and utilise sea resources, the move has now been postponed for unknown reason," he added.
Referring to the country's existing fishing strength, joint secretary (Blue Economy) of the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock (MoFL) Md Toufiqul Arif said currently there are some 35,000 conventional trawlers that fish in shallow depth offshore areas up to 90 metres.
The country has 237 semi-modern industrial trawlers that can fish in sea up to 150 metres depth.
"But the country has huge resources, especially sea fish and animals in the Bay, which is still unknown to us," he said.
The Fisheries Ministry, however, initiated a study to ascertain the country's fish and livestock resources in sea in 2017, which is expected to be completed by June this year, said Mr Arif.
