States » EastPosted at: Sep 20 2026 11:31PM


Bengal: Historically rare, hilsas still swimming to Damodar upstream

Burdwan, Sep 20 (UNI) Uncommon historically, but exciting in rare catches indeed, river and Fishery Department experts still fail to explain why hilsa frequently venture upstream into the Damodar.
Fishermen harvested a prized silver hilsa in the Damodar river at Khandaghosh here on Sunday, creating a stir among the community.
Fisherman Sanatan Sarkar from Beladanga village had cast his net in the Damodar as usual today and found a pair of hilsas trapped. While one slipped away, he managed to pull up the other, weighing around 800 grams, prompting locals to gather for a glimpse of the catch. Sanatan said, “I could get at least Rs 1,500 if I had sold it, but I reserved the fish for my family.”
In 2024, a one-kg hilsa had been caught in the net of a fisherman further downstream at Jamalpur, which a local businessman, Lakshman Biswas, had bought for Rs 2,100.
The presence of hilsa in the Damodar is historically rare and considered an ecological accident rather than a regular phenomenon by river experts. Mozammel Haque, a recently retired Fishery officer in Burdwan, told UNI, “Hilsa is an anadromous marine fish; it spends most of its life in the Bay of Bengal and swims upstream into sweet freshwater rivers primarily to spawn during the monsoon and for this, the Bhagirathi is their cosy and favoured corridor for migration.”
Still, hilsa, giant catla and even Gangetic dolphins have been spotted on some rare occasions in the Damodar earlier. At Randiha in the Budbud PS area, about 30 km upstream along the Damodar, where the Anderson weir was constructed on the river in 1932 to check floods and store water for irrigation, the presence of hilsa has been recorded from time to time. Durgapur Barrage was built 19 km upstream in 1955.
Supriyo Mondal of Randiha, a teacher by profession, told UNI, “We used to get hilsa from the local fishermen, which in the last ten-twelve years has stopped. But it's quite interesting that they are visible further in the river.”
Experts also said that aquatic species often enter tributaries from the Ganga during high tide or in search of food. UNI KS NST CDS
Tags: #Bengal: Historically rare# hilsas still swimming to Damodar upstream
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