Biography

 

Dr. Shah Muhammad Hasanuzzaman

(BAAS President: 1983-1984)

 

Dr. Shah Muhammad Hasanuzzaman was born on 1st January 1925 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He obtained B.Sc. and M.Sc. in 1945 and 1947   respectively     from    the       Agricultural      Institute            of         Dhaka University. He also obtained MS from Arkansas State University, USA in 1957. He received Ph.D. from Texas A & M University, USA in 1959. Dr. Hasanuzzaman started his career as Research Officer, Economic Botany Division, Agricultural Research Institute, Dhaka. He was Advisor on Agriculture of Japan International Cooperation Agency, Dhaka, since 1992; Member Agriculture, Planning Commission (1987 to 1990); Liaison Scientist of International Rice Research Institute from January 1985 to December 1986; Director General of Bangladesh Rice Research Institution (BRRI) from 1977 to 1984. His fields of specialization were plant genetics, rice, wheat, maize and cotton breeding and agronomic

work.

Dr. Hasanuzzaman was a Fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. He was the recipient of Independence Day Gold Medal; Honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) Bangladesh Krishi Unnayan Ratna; and National Professor by Viswa Unnayan Samsad, Calcutta, India.

Dr. S. M. H. Zaman expired on 9 October 2011.

 

Presidential Address

3 March 1984

The Sea: The Ultimate Resource for Survival

 

THIS PLANET earth cannot be imagined without its oceans and seas which cover about 71% of its total surface and presently contain 97% of the geological water of the hydrosphere. Of the rest, ground water and icecaps at the poles and in the high mountains account for 2% with only 1% present in the atmosphere. Life started at sea and, hence, life on earth is inseparable from water. Even then the vast fathomless oceans have not still been well-studied and used, in general and by us, in particular.

 

Compared to Bangladesh, the science of oceans, or oceanography or oceanology, has greatly progressed in other countries. The question is: for how long shall we ignore this resource which can supplement our basic needs?

 

Why it is necessary to use the Bay of Bengal to supplement our basic needs? The answer is very simple: our land is limited. Bangladesh is one of the most thickly populated areas on earth, or, one may simply call it over-populated. Further intensification of land use is possible, but inputs needed for optimum food production are dwindling. By end of this century we may need 25- 26 million tons of cereals and, at the present rate of production,

16.8 million hectares to produce this cereal food. With double cropping, this will require 8.4 million hectares, which is the total arable land of Bangladesh. If the entire land is used to produce cereal foods, where will we get land to grow other essential crops and livestock and  fish?  The land fertility will  also  become  more

 

reduced. At the present rate of consumption, we will need at least an additional 1 million tons of fertilizers: these will have to be imported, but from where will we get so much foreign exchange? Since there will be no land left to produce other essential crops and livestock. We shall have to import them. Due to the paucity of land, our export earnings from cash crops will also be negligible. Identical reasons and want of inputs will render it extremely difficult to increase cropping intensity to 300% which will be needed to meet the food challenge. The-intensification of land use demands heavy input investments for faster productivity.

 

Therefore, the time has come to use the sea as a source of food and industrial raw materials. Can we do it within the next 20 years? Unless we start working on it right now, we will probably never achieve it.

 

THE SEA FRONTIERS

 

Irrigation

By the close of this century, there are reasons to believe that Bangladesh will be deprived of water from the Ganges and other rivers originating in alien lands. We can not continue to totally depend on rains. Within the next 20 years 8 million hectares will need to be brought under irrigation: a significant portion of irrigation water must come from the sea. This demands new technology apart from desalinization or freezing techniques of the present day.

The University of Arizona has developed a combined power, water and food production process for arid regions. This has been successfully demonstrated in Mexico. A similar plant is in operation at Sadiyat in Abu Dhabi. The waste heat of at thermal power station is used to distil freshwater from the nearby sea at the rate of about 70,000 gallons (318,000 lit) per day. This water is used for drinking as well as for irrigation. Key West (USA) produces 2 million gallons a day for a Population of 34,000. Kuwait may install a plant with a distillation capacity of 600

million gallons a day by 1985. Israel has a desalinization plant at Eilat based on freezing techniques. Ipswich (UK) is planning for such a plant with a capacity of 1 million gallons of water per day.

 

Power Generation

Electricity from the sea will be another resource to supplement our ever growing energy demand. We cannot continue to use natural gas to produce electricity because this will be needed to produce more nitrogenous fertilizer and other essential chemicals for Agriculture and fuel for kitchens and factories.

The Rance Tidal Power station of the French State Electricity Board has been installed on the north coast of Brittany and the estuary of the Rance river. The Rance Tidal Barrage is not a super technology but has provided the French with a reliable plant practically unaffected by flood and drought. The mean annual power output is about 500 million kilowatt- hours. The Claude Power Station in Cuba has been using sea water to generate electricity since 1931. A similar plant is in operation at Abidjan in Ivory Coast of West Africa. A Hawaii Power Plant will use cold sea water (70 C) from a depth of 152m (500ft). This will increase the condenser efficiency to save about US$3,70,000 per year.

Research is going on and more and more nations are expecting to use sea-powered electric plants where, due to socio-political reasons, nuclear power will not be feasible.

 

Sea Foods

From time immemorial man has used the fish and fish-like creatures and many plants of the sea for food. A minimum of 60 million tons of sea fish is consumed annually in the world for food or used for other purposes. However, from among about 25,000 known fish species, only a few dozens are extensively used as food. In Bangladesh, consumption is limited due to our antipathy to sea fish. We are accustomed to eating sweet-water fish. The dislike is due to the peculiar odour and texture of the fish meat. Only Chanda, vetki, shrimps and hilsha are popular. However, people living near the seashore use more sea fish as food than the

 

people living inland. We are not at all accustomed to eating sea weeds. Occasionally, in Chinese or Japanese restaurants we may try such foods as a delicacy.

Nevertheless, sea fish and other creatures including zoo-and phyto- plankton and flora of the sea can be used to produce organic manures for our crops. This will not only supplement the depleted soil organic matter but will also supply much needed zinc sulphur and other micro-and macro-nutrients used in crop production. Marine fish farming in Bangladesh is now limited to shrimp culture. Organized marine fish farming as practiced in the Philippines and elsewhere is yet to be planned.

The harvest of the resources of the sea, in its modern sense, is not practiced in Bangladesh. There are many socioeconomic and administrative problems which demand very close study and bold actions to make this trade profitable and noble.

 

Industrial Products

We, of course, produce common salt from sea water, but the technique and organization are both equally inefficient and beset with problems. As a result, we have been often compelled to pay unthinkable prices for salt and import it. Perhaps we have yet to think about the production of bromine and magnesium from sea water even though more than 90% of the world‟s production of these of two elements comes from the sea. Production of manganese is feasible but needs economical techniques to make the industry paying.

The other useful elements available in sea water in a significant amount are fluorine, sulphur, chlorine, potassium, calcium and strontium. However, for successful and economical extraction we need to develop an efficient chemical process.

 

Gas and Oil

Recent but more prospective area of seabed exploitation lies in the mining of natural gas and fossil fuel. Of course, oil prospecting on a commercial basis began in 1891 near the California coast. However, more organized oil prospecting began in 1931 and by

1940 successful drilling was accomplished in the Gulf of Mexico off the Lousiana cost. International offshore oil exploration began after World War II. There have been commercial successes in the North Sea, the Arabian sea, the Indian ocean and elsewhere. The other potential oil-rich areas lie in the Mediterranean, off the west coast of Africa, the southern shore of South America and the Australian and Alaska sea coasts. Possibilities of getting oil in other smaller bays, including the Bay of Bengal, exist. An estimated 50% of oil and gas reserves lie beneath the continental shelves. Usually, these hydrocarbon fossil fuel deposits are found in Permian Zechstein formations.

 

POPULATION AND POLITICS

Recent human activities, in particular by the industrial nations, have, to an extent, created the pollution of the sea and converted it into a lifeless desert. Overfishing has led to stretched and expanded fishing areas creating political frictions. More powerful nations are leading the way and dominating the world‟s fishing areas.

This has raised the question: who owns the oceans and seabeds? The United Nations resolutions, as usual, are either ignored or overruled by the nations which have the strength to ignore them. Greed and power are both in action to deprive the weaker nations, who need the resources the most, of the opportunity to make the best use of them.

Bangladesh cannot sit idle for long. If she wants to survive reasonably well, attention must be diverted to the seas, especially to the Bay of Bengal. We should not forget that the sea is capable of a greater production of food per unit area than the land. One may produce about 340 kg of beef per hectare on the land but one hectare of sea is enough to produce 2.5 tons of fish. God has created similar human stomachs for all nations. It is the human habit that has given rise to the adoption of different diets. Europeans, Americans, Africans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Japanese and Chinese have changed their food habits. Why on earth we, the Bangladeshis, shall not change our food habits when we need to change it for a better living and, indeed, to survive.