one of the largest in the world.

Abdul Khalek, president of a fishing trawler owners association in Cox's Bazar, said members were in shock as the ban comes during the peak season for catching Hilsa, a type of herring.

"We were neither prepared nor received any early warning," he told AFP. "The order came suddenly. We already couldn't go to the sea for 15 days due to Cyclone Fani."

Khalek said fishermen had in the past welcomed short bans on fishing which seemed "healthy" forall parties.

"But two months of unemployment would be too hard," he said.

Chittagong fisheries department official Mominul Haque said some 25,000 registered fishermen had returned to port since the ban was declared.

"Fishermen have only one thought in mind: how they will feed their children as there will beled to the establishment of a cafe at Smiggin Holes around 1939, where horse-drawn sleighs would deliver skiers to be begin the arduous ski to the Kosciusko Chalet. It was the construction of the vast Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme from 1949 that really opened up the Snowy Mountains for large scale development of a ski industry and led to the establishment of Thredbo and Perisher as leading Australian resorts. The Construction of Guthega Dam brought skiers to the isolated Guthega district and a rope tow was installed there in 1957.

The last establishment of a major skifield in New South Wales came with the development of Mount Blue Cow in the 1980s. In 1987 the Skitube Alpine Railway opened to deliver skiers from Bullocks Flat, on the Alpine Way,