Bay of Bengal
Visit Saint Martin, Coral Island, Bangladesh: Piece of Paradise on Bay of Bengal
Saint Martin's Island is one of the most admired tourist places that get into the itinerary of travelers while planning long tours inside Bangladesh. This is the only coral island in the southernmost part of the mainland of Bangladesh, awake with the wonder of thousands of tourists. 9-km south of Teknaf in Cox's Bazar, at the estuary of the Naf River, this small island is proudly announcing its existence with an area of only 3 sq-km. The travel feature is created this time with details of this place of interest. Let’s have them.
How Saint Martin's Island got its name
Professor Mostafa Kamal Pasha and Professor Sheikh Bakhtiyar Uddin of the Department of Botany, University of Chittagong researched on Saint Martin's Island. According to Kamal Pasha, the island came to the notice of Arabian traders 250 years ago during trade with Southeast Asia. They then named the island 'Jazira' which means peninsula. Later the locals started calling it ‘Narical Gingira’ which means ‘Island of Coconuts’.
The island was annexed by British-India during a land survey in 1900 during British rule. Professor Bakhtiyar Uddin claimed that the island was named after Martin, the then Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong. But according to the Bangladesh Tourism Corporation's website, Martin was a Christian saint. However, the name of this saint later became associated with the island.
Read The Most Beautiful Tea Gardens in Bangladesh to visit
Why you should visit Saint Martin's Island
At first, flying and playing in the foamy sea of white Gangchils on the sea route from Teknaf to Saint Martin island will give you an intro to the upcoming endless joys. Although it consists of seven different neighborhoods, each of them is woven in a single thread-like pearl necklace. In the afternoon with a cup of tea, you can witness the best sunset of your life from the west coast of the island. There is no alternative to West Beach to dive into Saint Martin. Spend the morning on East Beach. East Beach takes on a magical look when the first rays of the sun catch your eyes by climbing the mountains of Myanmar.
Chheradwip is formed by relying on corals in the southernmost part of the island. It is called Chheradip because it gets separated from the main island during the monsoon season. In addition to sea and sunbathing, Saint Martin is also a great place for scuba diving, snorkeling, and barbecue. If you don’t stay there for at least one day, you will have to come back with lots of regrets.
Read Trip to Tanguar Haor, Sunamganj: Majestic aquatic beauty soaking the horizon
PM inaugurates work on Cox's Bazar Airport’s runway upgradation
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday unveiled the foundation stone of the runway extension project of Cox's Bazar Airport, aiming to enable it to offer a longer range of domestic and international passenger services.
The Prime Minister inaugurated the construction work on the maritime runway, the first of its kind in Bangladesh, virtually from her official residence Ganobhaban.
Read: Cox's Bazar Airport set to get a spectacular maritime runway
The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (Caab) has taken the Tk 1,568.86 crore project to construct the country’s longest runway by extending the existing 9,000-foot runway by another 1,700 on the Bay of Bengal by reclaiming land from the sea.
Coast Guard rescues 13 fishermen from stranded boat off Cox's Bazar
The Bangladesh Coast Guard (BCG) has rescued as many as 13 fishermen stranded in a boat in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Cox's Bazar.
The boat with the 13 fishermen was adrift in the sea following an engine failure around 8.30am on Monday, about 10 nautical miles west of Laboni Beach in Cox's Bazar.
Read:13 Indian fishermen detained from Bay
Coast Guard headquarters media officer Lieutenant Commander Amirul Haque said that the fishing boat 'FB Ma Moni' carrying the fishermen set out from Cox's Bazar Ghat number six early on Monday.
"Around 8.30am, the boat's engine broke down off Laboni Beach. The boatmen sent out an SOS message to BCG Cox's Bazar station. The fishermen were rescued later that night. They were given food and first aid at our station," he said.
Read:Navy rescues 17 stranded fishermen from Bay of Bengal
The rescued fishermen were later handed over to their families and the fishing boat to the owners, the BCG official said.
Missing Chinese citizen found dead in Chattogram
A Chinese national, who had gone missing on Wednesday, was found dead in a water body near the southern part of the Banshkhali Thermal Power Plant in Chattogram district on Thursday.
The Chinese national, G Kingwan, 34, working at the thermal power plant in Banshkhali upazila, remained missing since Wednesday noon.
Read:Chinese worker goes missing in Chattogram
He was last spotted catching fish in the Bay of Bengal," said Safiul Kabir, officer-in-charge of Banshkhali Police Station.
Kingwan, along with his colleagues, went to the site adjacent to the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday morning to join a pipe-installation work. His colleagues informed the police about his disappearance around 2.30 pm.
Later, a GD was registered with the Banshkhali police station.
On Thursday morning, local people spotted the floating body of the Chinese man in the water body and informed the police, said Akter Hossain, sub-inspector of the police station.
Read:Reward announced for info on missing Chinese engineer
Police later recovered the body and sent it to Chattogram Medical College and Hospital for autopsy.
“We’ve no idea how the Chinese man died …police are investigating it,” said chief coordinator of the power plant Faruk Ahmed.
Navy rescues 17 stranded fishermen from Bay of Bengal
The Bangladesh Navy, in the small hours of Wednesday, rescued as many as 17 fishermen from a trawler that broke down in the Bay of Bengal.
An officer from the naval headquarters here told UNB that the fishing trawler, ‘Tamanna Munshi-4’, ventured into deep waters with 17 fishermen on board on August 1.
Read: 19 Bangladeshi fishermen rescued from Indian waters in Bay of Bengal
That very day, the engine of the boat went out of order, forcing the fishermen to remain stranded in the sea for three days.
A team from the Bangladesh Navy rescued the stranded fishermen five miles away from Kutubdia point after the master of the trawler made an SOS call to national emergency number 999.
Read:Sundarbans fishermen remain a neglected lot
The rescued fishermen have been given first aid and food, the officer said.
1 lakh people stranded in Bagerhat as flooding worsens
Heavy downpours and high tide, caused by depression over the Bay of Bengal, for the last three days have left at least 1 lakh people marooned in Bagerhat.
Loy-lying areas of the coastal district's Mongla, Rampal, Morrelganj, Sharankhola, Bagerhat Sadar and Kachua have been inundated.
Also, the flooding damaged crops and forced people to leave their homes.
Read: Floods, landslides hit Rohingya camps hard: UNHCR
Around 287 hectares of Aman paddy seedbed, 950 hectares of hectares Aus paddy fields, and 209 hectares of vegetable fields have been inundated as the water is slow to recede, Shafiqul Islam, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) of Bagerhat, said.
Nearly 20,000 families have become marooned, Bagerhat Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Azizur Rahman told UNB.
Read: Flash flood inundate low-lying areas in Kurigram, Shepur and Sirajganj
"The upazila nirbahi officers have been instructed to prepare a list of affected families. The district administration has also stepped forward to support them," he added.
The DAE recorded 86.22mm of rainfall in the past 24 hours in the district.
2 elephants that crossed from Myanmar rescued from Bay
Three days after they were noted to have crossed over into Bangladesh territory from Myanmar, two Asian elephants were rescued from the Bay of Bengal near Shahpari Island on Tuesday.
With the help of local fishermen and the authorities, the Forest Department was able to rescue the two elephants.
The elephants got down from the hills in the Bangladesh-Myanmar bordering areas and took the Naf river near Naitangpara in Teknaf Municipality last Saturday.
Also read: 2 elephants cross into Bangladesh through River Naf
They have followed the course of the Naf to reach the Bay of Bengal.
After several failed rescue attempts in the last three days, Syed Ashiq Ahmed, Teknaf Range Officer, prepared four boats and ran a successful rescue operation with the help of the fishermen in Shahpori island.
He said that the Forest Department had been trying their best to rescue the elephants since the first day but it became even harder on the third and fourth day as tidal water had accelerated their journey to the sea.
The two elephants have become weak due to lack of food for the last three days.
Also read: Garo man trampled to death by elephant in Sherpur
After the rescue, they were given adequate food.
The rescued elephants would be taken to the forest, said Teknaf Range Officer Syed Ashiq Ahmed.
The areas in Teknaf and Ukhia where the Rohingya refugee camps proliferated traverse a known elephant corridor. Human-elephant conflict has arisen as a result of the corridor being encroached upon. As a result, elephants have been facing food crises and often head down to the locality.
Bhasan Char: an excellent example for a safe, sustainable, and resilient place for Rohingya relocation
The Bhasan Char is a near shore island in the Bay of Bengal located in the western side of Sandwip and it is separated from Sandwip Island by a 6-kmwide shallow channel. It is 60 km away from the mainland of Noakhali District (Fig. 1).The name of this newly emerged island (since 2003) was Thengar Char. Our Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina introduced the name of the island as Bhasan Char for the relocation of the forcefully displaced people of Rohingya Community of Myanmar sheltered at Kutupalong area of Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar.
Read: Bhasan Char much better than Cox’s Bazar camps: UNHCR
Geologically, Bangladesh is formed of the recent alluvial sediments (age: from 10,000 years to date) with few isolated Pleistocene terraces (age:from 10,000 years to 2.5 million years) that include Madhupur Tract in the central part, Barind Tract in the northwestern part and Lamai Hills in the eastern part of the country and the Tertiary (age: 2.5 million to 23 million years) eastern folded belts.The folded belts are composed of sandstone, siltstone, and shale/claystone. When these sedimentary rocks encountered at shallow depth below the alluvial sediments, we termed these rock layers as bedrock due to their high rock strength. The western most fold of the easter hill ranges is the Sitakund Anticlinal Structure. The convex part of the fold is called Anticline and the concave part of the fold is called syncline. The Sandwip Channel is a syncline in the western part of the Sitakund Anticline. The Sandwip Island including Bhasan Char is a part of a buried Anticline. Therefore, basement of Sandwip and Bhasan Char Island is strong due to the presence of bedrocks at shallow depth.The land area of the island is increasing day and day since its emergence in 2003 due to the accretion of sediments around the island from the Bay of Bengal.
BhasanChar was a virgin island before the Rohingya relocation. Bangladesh Navy have implemented a project to develop the infrastructures in the Bhasan Char for the relocation of Rohingya people.Now, all types of urban facilities area available in this island.Various preventive measure has been taken to protect the island as well its inhabitants.
To protect the bank erosion and inundation of the island from tidal waves and surges, three layers engineering protective measures have taken in the island (Fig. 2). The outer layer of the protective measures is the wave breakers. The second protective measure is low height embankment of gravels and geo-bags. Then, the natural mangrove forest and the inner last protective measure is the nine feet height embankment consisting of compacted and consolidated silt and clayey silt taken fromnearby sites. The height of the embankment to be raised up to nineteen feet in future keeping the slope ratio at 1:5 with 25 feet top width, which will use as road. Pavement of cement-concrete (CC) blocks will be placed on the outer slope, and planting and grassing will be done along the embankment to protect the erosion of the embankment from tidal surges and torrential rainfall of monsoon time. The embankment is constructed following standard procedure based the model prepared for 100 years return period of tidal storm surges.
Read:Section of global media, CSOs campaigning against Bhasan Char with distorted info: MoFA
Cyclone Yaas impact: 27 upazilas affected by storm surge
People of 27 upazilas across nine coastal districts of Bangladesh were hit by a three to six feet storm surge caused by Cyclone Yaas Wednesday.
State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Dr Md Enamur Rahman said this at a media briefing in Dhaka.
Yaas moved inland into India's Odisha from the Bay of Bengal in the morning, but Bangladesh remained largely unscathed. However, people in districts such as Satkhira, Khulna, Bagerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna, Patuakhali, Bhola, Noakhali and Laxmipur have been affected by the high tide, Enamur said.
At least two deaths were reported in Bangladesh and thousands of people in 200 villages were marooned as their homes, shops and farms were flooded by tidal surges.
The "very severe cyclonic storm" packed sustained winds of 130-140 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 155 kph when it made landfall, the India Meteorological Department said.
Also read: Cyclone Yaas: 2 deaths reported in Bangladesh, 5 in India
The affected upazilas include Shyamnagar, Asashuni, Koyra, Dakop, Paikgachha, Sharankhola, Mongla, Morelganj, Mathbaria, Barguna Sadar, Patharghata, Amtali, Patuakhali Sadar, Galachipa, Rangabali, Dashmina, Mirzaganj, Kolapara, Charfashion, Monpura, Tajumuddin, Dawlatkhan, Borhanuddin, Bhola Sadar, Hatia, Ramgati and Kamalnagar, Enamur informed.
The government rushed 16,500 packets of dry food to the affected residents of these areas, he said.
“Bay of Bengal: Of Bounties Untold”
“A coffee table book, also known as a cocktail table book, is an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can serve to inspire conversation or pass the time. Subject matter is predominantly non-fiction and pictorial (a photo-book). Pages consist mainly of photographs and illustrations, accompanied by captions and small blocks of text, as opposed to long prose. Since they are aimed at anyone who might pick up the book for a light read, the analysis inside is often more basic and with less jargon than other books on the subject. Because of this, the term "coffee table book" can be used pejoratively to indicate a superficial approach to the subject”. Wikipedia
If one were to accept the above description of a typical coffee table book, Enayetullah Khan’s “BAY OF BENGAL: OF BOUNTIES UNTOLD” largely fits the contour in format, contents and presentation, yet far exceeds the substantive bounds for it to be described pejoratively. It is truly oversized (and I have numerous coffee table books, collected over the last half a century or so, stacked on the top of my bookshelves for lack of enough space for display on my coffee table anymore). This book is also quite heavy on the hands, on account of the thick glossy paper and very hard, very durable binding that holds the pages together (I shall not go into crass details of its volume and weight). Its striking front cover is filled with the arresting photograph of a menacing, yet innocently so, Blue Shark (scientific name: Prionace Glauca), lazy curiosity in its in its left eye seemingly sizing up the viewer, swimming languidly in the azure blue waters somewhere deep in the Bay of Bengal. If I picture it as one of several coffee table books on an ornate coffee table in the depths of a lavish entertainment area, I can also imagine this image of the shark leaping out at its viewers and starting a conversation – absolutely, without failure. It would compellingly invite its viewers to pick it up. Browsing through its 264 pages, filled with striking photographs and illustrations of myriad marine flora and fauna, to be found in the Bay of Bengal, from the microscopic to the giant-sized, one can be easily drawn into a vortex of curiosity that would make the beholders stray from the more casual spirit of light-hearted bonhomie called for in a party meant to be entertaining. And here, its conformity to the generic description of a coffee table book would end abruptly. The brilliantly splendid photographs are truly a feast for the eyes. Without going into the descriptive narrative and contents, one could be awed simply by the magnificence of the oceanic bounties and treasures that the Bay of Bengal holds. But, when one starts reading its textual contents, this book transforms into something else entirely.
Like any book with a serious substance and a message embedded within it, this book’s narrative substance is similarly organized, breaking the mould of a coffee table book. The foreword by Bangladesh’s 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Muhammad Yunus, succinctly introduces the serious depth contained within the glossy photographic feast:
“The Bay has been romanticized since time immemorial … as our very own gateway to the ocean – to the Great Beyond. The author has done a great service for Bangladesh in illustrating the allure of the Bay in all its resplendent majesty. This work also makes a clear case for why ensuring the security of the Bay and its natural resources … should be of utmost priority for Bangladesh…. We as a nation have a duty to safeguard and preserve its immeasurable beauty for future generations to benefit from and admire all that our Bay has to offer.”
Dr. Jonathan Baillie, Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist of the National Geographic Society, in his Foreword to this book and describing his own visit to the Sundarbans as a member of WildTeam, captures the essence of the book in two simple sentences:
“As our boat headed back for the day, I was left with one simple thought: if you could choose one area of the world to experience a rich mosaic of human and natural worlds, it would be this.
“It [this book] is a story of a region at the forefront of global threats to our planet – from population density and overfishing to climate change. It is also story of incomparable biodiversity and economic vitality. And it is a story of hope – of transformation, prosperity and an enduring effort to implement sustainable solutions.”
The author sets the very serious undertone of the apparently dazzlingly light photographic subject, with his own introductory remarks to the book under the eye-catching banner headline: CHANGING GEOPOLITICAL DYNAMICS ARE REVIVING INTEREST IN THE BAY OF BENGAL LITTORAL. In his very opening sentence, he states:
“China’s Belt and Road Initiative as well as Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific are weaving new networks of connectivity in the Bay of Bengal”.
Then he outlines in his short essay how:
“the waters of the Bay of Bengal connected the sub-continent to continental and maritime Southeast Asia and China for centuries and played a critical role in the economic globalisation of the region during the 19th and 20th centuries..… To be sure, many fear the competitive dynamic between China on the one hand, and India and Japan on the other, in the development of regional connectivity.”
Khan, however, optimistically asserts, and exhorts:
“Realists would see two linings of silver. One is that competition may well produce better financial terms for the development of littoral infrastructure. In the other, all three Asian giants are looking for opportunities to resolve their differences on the promotion of connectivity, and their Asian neighbours must encourage them to move in that direction”
The book is formatted into eight chapters, that progress thematically and gives the viewer-reader an enthralling tour d’horizon of the priceless ecosystem that is the Bay of Bengal , notably the largest Bay of Planet Earth.
Chapter One, “The Enthralling Bay of Bengal”, gives its geographical location and bounds of this 2 million sq km magnificent water body, describes the rivers of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) Basin that pay tribute to it incessantly with their awesome volume of waters (1,222 million cubic meters) and their humongous collective amounts of sedimentation that they bring down as they course from the Eastern Himalayas through the course of the Gangetic plains of the Indian subcontinent, and then deposit them all into the Bay. It gives us a glimpse of the mysterious submarine valley of the Bay, with its troughs, trenches and ridges – notable among these being the Java (or Sundra) Trench which is still seismically active, and the aseismic Ninety East Ridge. It describes the formation of the iconic Bengal Fan, “born from the uplift and erosion of the Himalayans and Tibetan Plateau in the age of the continental drift that continues to this day”, and completely covers the floor of the Bay. It gives us a bird eye view of the myriad islands, whether continental or tiny in size that dot the Bay’s expanse. It describes in reasonable detail, the Bay’s physiochemical properties, temperature, salinity and water density, the nature of its tides, and the constant seasonal changes of the sea level. It describes in short, the several distinct features of this marine biome’s several patches, namely the South, South of South, Middle Patches and the mysterious Swatch of No Ground, all of which have been rich trove of myriad type of fishery resources supporting human livelihood in the region and promise greater wealth not just from its rich marine life but also from its immeasurable mineral and hydrocarbon resources buried in great depths, if harvested responsibly and in sustainable manner.
Chapter Two is aptly Captioned “The Nonpareil Marvels”, describing as it does “a never-ending show of abounding maritime bewilderments – both in terms of physical attributes and biological entities”. It gives a panoramic picture of the Bay’s unparalleled marvels, sweeping our eyes across the terrain of world’s longest beach, the largest delta, the largest submarine Fan (a submarine fan is an accumulation of land-derived sediment on the deep seafloor), biggest single block of mangrove forestry. The Bay contains still an active volcano and several inactive ones as well(but recent history is no guarantee that an inactive volcano can become active even after a gap of several thousand years!). It is home to the whale shark, the largest shark and fish on the planet, which is also the largest non-mammalian vertebrate in the world. It has the richest stock of Hilsa (Tenualosa ilisha) in the world, as well as the biggest known rookery of sea turtle. And last, but not least, it is home to the Pride of Bengal, the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris)—notably the only known population of the species enclosed within a mangrove habitat.
Chapter Three, captioned “History and Culture, Perseverance and Prosperity”, gives us a sweeping survey of how the Bay has connected peoples, civilizations, and cultures through facilitating maritime travels and trade, gleaning glimpses from accounts dating back to the manuscripts of Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. We learn how colonization of the Bay area commenced in the 1st century AD; how indeed the etymology of the Bay changed from its earlier name of The Chola, after the Chola Dynasty which was the first maritime power of the region in the 2nd century BC until colonization of the Bay by the Portuguese 800 years later who named it Golfo de Bengala. Khan tantalizes us with brief allusions to the Bay having witnessed rise and fall of several notable dynasties of the Bay region, namely the Chola, Chera, Pallava and Pandya dynasties of South India, the Chalukya and Rashtrakuta dynasties of Central India, the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasties of North India, the Pala and Sena dynasties of Bengal, and the Sri Vijaya dynasty of the Malay Archipelago, and embellishing the narrative with color plates of architectural relics and monuments that whet the appetite to learn more. He maps, in sketchy details the seemingly ceaseless struggle for regional supremacy by different powers trading with or competing with each other, traversing the Indian Ocean across the Bay to the realm of Pacific . His tongue in cheek punch line that I liked best was : “The goal for every party was to catch up with the pace of Chinese commerce.” Déjà vu? Khan also briefly teases us with glimpses of the views of the Bay region, from the Far East with Chinese Song dynasty sea farers venturing into Bay waters; the rise and sweep of the Mongols, the arrival and spread of Islam not just by conquerors but traders and Sufi proselytes; and from the West, by the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, the French and the English. In modern era, commencing in the early 20th century and the advent of Industrial Age, new technologies developed new capacities, vessels and modes of transportation like aircraft capable of flying across oceanic zones, sprouting new modes of connecting and competing. The Bay region was always rich in resources. The concentration of resources also made it the most densely populated. As Khan asserts:
“The Bay of Bengal now feeds countries where one in four of the world’s population live. A staggering half a billion of them depends entirely on the resources and amenities offered by the Bay. This region is a cornerstone of globalization; designed by dynamic migration and by blending of culture, heritage and belief; by the commercial sale of natural goods in a global market.”
In Chapter Four, captioned “Flora – The Guardians and the Chefs”, he aptly describes Bangladesh as “a land breathing though its waterways”. While more than 6,000 plant species exist in Bangladesh alone, “the entire Bay sustains a towering diversity of plant life”. In the mangrove belt alone, he cites 245 genera and 334 plant species having been identified and catalogued in 1903. “The Sundarbans is endowed with 30 of the 53 species of true mangroves in the world”, with an abundance of sundari, gewa, goran and keora trees. The sundari yields a hard wood used for boat building and house construction. The Bay area offers coastal wetlands in abundance. The mix of sandy soil and fine silt rich in minerals and organic matter provide the ingredients of genesis of floral and faunal life, climbing up a complex but intricately interdependent food chain that enables different species to survive and co-exist in a wondrous ecosystem. Khan traces this interdependence in the “24/7 Open Cookhouse” as he calls it, from the microscopic phytoplankton of this region, progressing up into algae and other higher species. Phytoplankton enable all life to flourish in the sea. Khan informs us of the presence of sizeable underwater grass meadows that nourish a variety of marine life, not least among them being them being a sea mammal called the Dugong that lives in the shallow seaboard of the Bay. Apart from comprising the foundation of an ecologically-integrated food chain, perhaps one of the most important functions (but still little appreciated by an ignorant public) is the inescapable fact that the Sundarbans has huge carbon sequestration capabilities as well as being a notable oxygen supplier – the very flora that require vast amounts carbon, whether trapped in the soil or in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, as food also excrete as by-product vast amounts of oxygen that all animal life needs in order to survive.
Chapter Five “The Flourishing Lives” is the longest chapter, devoted to cataloguing the myriad fauna that abound in this wondrous Bay. By way of introduction, appropriately, the frontispiece to this chapter features a striking full-page photograph of a brilliantly multi-hued Necklace Starfish Fromia monilis that appropriately prepares us for the feast of brilliant photographs of countless marine denizens of these waters. At the outset we are informed that Bangladesh has one of the longest coastlines, stretching 714 km with the marine area of the country including also the vast brackish coastal zone. With an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles, the total the maritime bounds of the country exceed her actual land mass, with its myriad boundless aquatic organisms of great commercial and economic importance. We are also informed that many of the marine life that inhabit the Bay still evade scientific identification and cataloguing. This almost 100-page chapter overwhelms our eyes with the countless photographic plates, drawings and scientific data on a vast array of the known aquatic denizens of the Bay, from the tiniest, almost microscopic zooplankton, and nekton, neuston, pleuston and benthos varieties (at the bottom of the Marine food chain) to the surprising gentle, very slow moving but largest nonmammalian vertebrate of these waters, the Whale Shark Rhinchodon typas. In between these two, Khan almost overwhelms our curious eyes with photographs, sketches and descriptions of myriad creatures, ranging from sponges, anemones and jelly fishes; numerous worms that inhabit the bottom of the sea; mollusks; the Cephalopods comprising cuttle fishes, squids and octopuses (which, Khan informs us, are one of the planet’s most intelligent creatures); the bewildering array of joint-footed invertebrate Crustaceans (of whom there are some 52,000 described species) ranging from the planktonic crustaceans to prawns, shrimps (some bearing exotic names like mantis shrimp and pistol shrimp), crabs, crayfishes, king crabs, krills and barnacles; the echinoderms that are the Stars of the sea; the many species of elastic fishes (sharks, rays, skates and saw fish), members of the Elasmobranchii family that are “made up of cartilaginous structures and possessing five to seven pairs of gill slits opening individually to the exterior, rigid dorsal fins, and small placoid scales on the skins” as we are informed. One is introduced to such exotically names creatures like tiger shark, zebra shark, bull shark and whale shark (among numerous other shark species); several species of guitarfish; a bewildering array of ray fishes; damselfishes, angelfishes, scorpionfishes and clown fish; reef associated fish that include colorful characters like Clownfish, Indian Vagabond Butterflyfish and common Parrotfish; to several species each of tuna, snappers, groupers, pomfrets, croakers; mullets, sailfishes and marlins, to name a few. Several pages and plates are devoted to the variety of amphibians (“first vertebrates to walk on the terrestrial earth”) and reptiles of the mangrove belt, among them coastal reptiles, sea turtles and sea serpents (among them the yellow-lipped sea Krait, and the notorious King Cobra and the saltwater crocodile; terrapins and water monitors. A vast array of seafaring birds, common and not so commonly known, many exotically plumed, some strangely billed, swarm around the eye some in magnificent flight, comprising a symphony of imagined sounds and calls. The chapter befittingly ends with the description, listing and magnificent photographs of the Sea-Ruling Mammals, adapted morphologically to the marine environment: among them the Bryde’s whale, and the prima ballerinas of the blue waters, the spinner dolphins and Irrawaddy dolphins.
Chapter Six follows the preceding chapter naturally and describes everything on what goes on to “Making a Living” from these myriad resources that nature provides us. The chapter begins with a lyrical introduction:
“The Bay of Bengal is motherly and compassionate – in every way possible – feeding, protecting, and parenting civilizations within and beyond her reach since beginning of recorded history. With consumable biological resources, the Bay gifts her lithe beauty, prodigious coastline, minerals and biofuels to a global market.”
This chapter describes briefly the activities of the fisheries sector, comprising the various kinds of marine capture fisheries, both the traditionally wild to increasingly farmed kind that range from marlins, snappers, cutlassfishes, the ubiquitous shad ilisha, and even the comparatively small-scale sharks fin industry; shellfish culture that is the backbone of Bangladesh’s second largest foreign exchange earner through exports of wild caught and farmed shrimps, prawns, lobsters and crabs; the burgeoning salt industry, “one of the oldest chemical industries” we are told; the array of mineral deposits that offer potentials for commercial exploitation, with one of these, Monazite as replacement fuel in place of uranium for use as fuel in our nuclear plant. The chapter briefly informs us of the thriving dockyards and our shipbreaking industry (the largest in the world, that enabled us to leap into the steel making industry). We are informed about the revival of our once famed ancient shipbuilding industry, with over 200 shipbuilding companies now in operation. We learn about the bustling prospects of trade through our seaports – the Bay of Bengal has since times immemorial providing trading entrepots through its coastal ports that ring the Bay, among them notably beig Colombo in Sri Lanka, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Kakinada (Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh), Puducherry (Pondicherry), Kolkata and Haldia (West Bengal), Mongla and Chattagram (Bangladesh). The chapter ends with a few words about the just awakening, yet much neglected, prospects of maritime tourism within the Bay of Bengal region.
The last two chapters, and are the shortest chapters, but serve to bring us down with a jarring thud to the lurking dangers that threaten this breathtakingly beautiful ecosystem that we have been introduced to in the preceding chapters spanning 212 pages.
In Chapter 7, “The Bay in Pink”, we get a glimpse of the darkly looming environmental hazards from global warming and climate change (adversely impacting the delicate balance and equilibrium that had held this ecosystem together since ancient times); of the alarming recession of critical habitats essential for species survival; the alarming and nefarious spread biohazards through increasing water pollution, the hazardous fallout for this delicately balanced ecosphere from expanding industrial activities(not least being the shipbreaking industry), and depleting fish stocks from a combination of environment deterioration and overly robust anthropogenic activities that harm the ecosystem, despite the Bay hosting 13 sites declared as Ramsar sites (wetland sites designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, known as the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental environmental treaty established in 1971 by UNESCO, which came into force in 1975).
Chapter Eight makes us peer “Through the Looking Glass”. It plucks us out of the romantic and romanticized, splendorous almost magical ecosphere of the Bay in which we had become immersed, to the new growing reality that starkly faces us. Khan’s introduction to this chapter perhaps best encapsulates the essence of the message inherent in it:
“The Bay region is at the forefront of processes that are shaping Asia’s future. The Bay of Bengal is now, as it was in the eighteenth century, an arena for strategic competition between rising powers. Today those powers are Asian rather than European: regional thalassocracies both eye the Bay of Bengal as a crucial frontier in their competition over energy resources, shipping lanes, and cultural influence. The Bay of Bengal’s littoral stands at the front line of Asia’s experience of climate change: its densely populated coastal zone is home to nearly half a billion people. In this new context, the Bay of Bengal serves as a source of strategic place of interest and inevitable determinant for the glory of nations.”
In response, a number of conservation alliances and initiatives, international, regional and national are listed (among them Khan’s own WildTeam) to preserve this wondrous ecosystem. While the alluring prospects of a still largely untapped Blue Economy are mentioned in closing, one is left with an acute awareness of the need for harvesting it in an eminently sustainable manner so that in our greed we don’t unwittingly kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Khan concludes this tome with an epilogue that blares out a dire warning: “Plastic Pollution and Noise Pollution are Threats to Marine Biodiversity”. He warns that while we awaken to the allure of Blue Economy, we must be evermore mindful of the dangers that are posed by our capacity for overexploitation. He warns us, somewhat sketchily, but sufficiently alarmingly of the dangers lurking in the waters from the growing menace of marine plastic that are mostly non-biodegradable, and that ironically are largely generated on land by human activities and then callously discarded to heedlessly flow through the water borne conduits, natural and man-made into the oceans. He also alerts us of the severely deleterious effects of anthropogenic generated cacophony of sounds that are emitted ranging from the sounds of ships engine’s traversing the waters or submarines coursing underwater, to naval sonar emissions for testing various technologies, new weapons systems or for tracking purposes, to the noise made by the hydrocarbon exploration-exploitation platforms that now increasingly dot the oceans, seas and Bays everywhere that use reflection seismology (use of loud pulses of sound to locate and map hydrocarbon pockets or simply spill their extractions, whether deliberately or accidentally. The expansion of these and many other related topics would form the contents of another volume. As Russel A Mittermeier, Chief Conservation Officer of Global Wildlife Conservation and Chair, IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group (and former President, Conservation International) eulogized in his foreword congratulating the author for this monumental new publication:
“The great wild expanses of the Bay of Bengal encapsulate the very best that this world of ours has to offer, and this book has made it abundantly clear why it is imperative for humans, the world over, to do their part in saving it.”
In presenting this magnificent mezze of the wonders of the Bay of Bengal, Khan has indeed whetted our appetites to learn and savor more of what the Bay has to offer. He has opened our eyes to a vast, wondrously marvelous ecosystem that nurtures us denizens of the Bay, but also alerted us for the need to nurture and preserve it. As an unlearned Bay votary, I would invite all to pick up a copy and browse through this book.
Ambassador (Retd.) Tariq A. Karim is the Director of the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies at Independent University, Bangladesh. He was a Distinguished International Executive in Residence at the University of Maryland. He is now also Honorary Advisor Emeritus, Cosmos Foundation.