M. Ben-Yami Column WORLD
FISHING, March 2010
SMALL-SCALE FISHERIES REVISITED
A
short report on India’s fisheries published by the International Collective in
Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) awakened me to the disproportionately small share
of information and discussion in most fisheries press, and the relatively
little research effort focusing on small-scale/artisanal fisheries (SSF). This,
in view that worldwide the SSF produce some 2/3 of the fish that go for direct
human consumption. According to FAO, SSF with its is over 90% of the world’s 28
million capture fishermen, produce over half the world’s marine and inland
catch, while supporting 84 million people employed in fish processing,
distribution and marketing. Since at least 95 per cent of the world’s
fisherfolk is in
In contrast to larger-scale fisheries, SSF are less likely to overfish finfish stocks and affect habitats. They use more indigenous resources and demand less energy, equipment, infrastructure, and foreign currencies, not only per worker, but also per ton of fish produced and, much more so, per their market value. Employing multiple fishing technologies and targeting multiple species, their catch goes for direct, human consumption, in fresh, smoked, dried, or frozen form and very few for reduction. While SSF is the employer of last resort in many countries, throughout the developed and developing industrialized world it is often economically more attractive for coastal people than some of its alternatives.
The artisanal and small-scale fisherfolk and their boats and
houses are the first to be hit by hurricanes, tsunamis and floods in coastal
areas. SSF are also vulnerable to coastal and marine pollution, to
indiscriminate longshore development causing devastation of essential habitats,
such as coastal wetlands and mangrove forests, to damming of rivers, and
upstream deforestation, and to coastal oil exploration and exploitation.
The bulk of this yield was produced by the more than 3.5 mln
people in 3,300 fishing villages with almost 1 mln active fishing people and
over ¾ of a million of other fishworkers and fish traders. They operate from
1,332 landing centres almost a quarter of a million of fishing craft, almost a
half of which is non-motorized. SSF and aquaculture provide employment also to
large numbers of women in fishery-associated trades.
Research and management. Studying inshore and other coastal fish stocks, which
in tropical and sub-tropical waters are quite multifarious and co-existing in
complex feeding inter-relations and within wide behavioural and hydrological
ranges, is expensive, scientifically difficult, and requires huge amounts of
work on the beach and at sea on board small craft, as well as lots of
laboratory space, staff and equipment. Therefore, apart from studies in social
sciences, much less research efforts have been directed at SSF than at
industrial fisheries.
In industrialized countries we witness dwindling and
marginalization of SSF, due to the its partly
conversion into semi-industrial and recreational activities, or as it has
happened in
Management of SSF hardly exists, and
if any, is often unfavourable trough outright discrimination in favour of
medium and large-scale commercial fisheries, or inappropriate “modernization”. In some countries, however, some allocation of
exclusive (and rarely enforced} inshore fishing grounds are favouring directly
or indirectly SSF operations, while in some industrial countries, perverted
taxation rules may goad fishermen to equip their boats with expensive, not
always absolutely necessary electronics.
The conventional management with its catch restrictions
targeting single species, while hotly disputed among the northern fishery
science and industry, is inappropriate and useless for SSF everywhere, above
all in developing countries where fishermen employ diverse fishing methods and
target diverse species and where SSF are spread over a multitude of small
landing sites and beaches.
Attempts to restore or introduce SSF-specific management methods
were described in Berkes et al. Managing
Small-scale Fisheries: Alternative Directions and Methods. IDRC,
Some decades ago, a self-regulatory mechanism had sufficed for effective and sustainable SSF operations, because with catches dropping beyond a certain minimum, fishing activity was becoming economically unrewarding, if not prohibitively costly. Since small-scale fishermen as a rule cannot continue fishing and lose money for long, lower catches eventually resulted in reduced fishing effort. More recently, however, increasing population pressures and, hence, growing demand, rising prices, and fishing becoming the employment of last resort for many newcomers, have messed up this self-regulatory system. With the resource cake divided among growing numbers of fishermen and, in particular, with rising fuel prices, incomes dropped and, in many places, overfishing has come about.
In the poorer countries of