Bangladesh has an inland water area of about 45,000 km2 and about 710 km long coastal belt. Bangladesh has vast inland freshwater resources including floodplains, ponds, rivers, oxbow lakes, large depressions (locally known as haor and beel), estuaries and a large coastal area with a sea. The fisheries sector contributes 3.52% to the national GDP, 26.37% to the agricultural GDP and more than 1.35% to the total export earnings. The total production was 4.552 m.mt fish in 2019-2020. Fisheries sector contributes significantly 62.58 g/day/capita of animal protein in daily dietary requirement. Aquaculture and fisheries sector of country is severely affected by pandemic corona virus (COVID-19). Data and information was collected by mixed-method including online questionnaire surveys, direct and telephonic interviews, key informant interviews (KII) and focus group discussions (FGD) and secondary data collected from the Department of Fisheries (DoF) and online grey literature. This study exposes a positive impact on ecosystem and increased fish stock in open water and coastal area due to stop of industrial influents and decreased fishing pressure for a certain period. The demand of spawn production decreased at the rate of 16 percent and number nursery practice was decreased at 18 percent and demand of food fish decreased at 20 percent. Finally, about (20-27)% fish farmer are not continued fish culture practice due to less demand and lower price of fish. All export and import based business is slowdown globally and nationwide lockdown situation imposed the supply chain, and processing and exporting of shrimp, crab and exportable other fish item hampered in this pandemic period. Out of 13%, about (18-21)% fisheries people somehow directly or indirectly related with fisheries sector are workless due to pandemic and a negative impact resulted a worsened livelihood. So, an action plan is needed to recover aquaculture sector from the pandemic considering enhance production, economic, social and environmental sustainability.
Keywords: Pandemic, COVID 19, Supply chain, Aquaculture, Fisheries, Spawn, Nursery, Livelihood.