When Hafizur Rahman began putting boxes made of iron rods and nets in the Boral river near his village named Ratanpur in Pabna five years back, villagers took him as a joke. What was he doing? Rahman assured them that it was nothing crazy.

 The iron bars form a box frame surrounded by fishing net. Once installed in the flowing water of the river, fishes can thrive here in the river environment and be periodically harvested easily by Rahman. And after six months, the villagers were surprised to see him rope in quality catches. He installed 10 such boxes.

The villagers soon got inspired to replicate what he did. Rahman harvested so much fish in the first year from these 10 boxes that he made a net profit of Tk 2 lakh. Now this profit margin has increased to Tk 60000 per box.

Each box 20 feet long, 10 feet wide and 6 feet deep cost him Tk 40000 to make. Each box can raise about 1000 fishes and each box lasts at least five years, Rahman said.

Rahman expanded his venture from 10 boxes to 50 boxes now—which stretches up to about a kilometre in length.

His success fetched him a national award from the fishing ministry in 2014. On top of it, he succeeded in inspiring other people in the area. Around a dozen people are now farming fish in cages in the river.

A small garments accessories supplier who used to frequently visit the industrial areas before getting involved with fish farming, Hafiz got the idea of farming in cages from seeing one such example in the Dakatia River in Chandpur district in 2010.

“We save the production and medicine cost because we can provide the fishes with the river environment,” Hafiz talks about the advantage of such farming over conventional fish farming, “we don’t need to spend extra money to dig a pond. We don’t need extra land.”

Pisciculture in boxes instead of traditional cultivation in pond is revolutionising fish farming in Bangladesh, says district fishery officer Abdul Jalal, “he has inspired many others in his village to do the same.”