Most tropical small-scale fishing communities, like those of Zanzibar (Tanzania), strongly depend on fisheries resources for income and protein supply. Although imperative, the evaluation of ...fisheries performance indicators for adequate management is often challenging given the data-poor nature of most of these fisheries. This study reviews the current literature and integrates findings from annual fisheries statistics, the perceptions of fishers, and ecological surveys to provide a holistic understanding of the fisheries exploitation level in Zanzibar. Most reviewed studies focused on the perception of fishers and ecological surveys, and only a few conducted any form of fisheries assessment. While the perception of fishers suggests resource overexploitation, officially reported catch data rather suggest a state around full exploitation for most resources. Ecological surveys indicate overexploitation of several target fish stocks for the west coast of Unguja Island. This study indicates that the perception of fishers and aggregated catch statistics should not be used as the only source of information when assessing data-poor, multispecies fisheries. Furthermore, indicators from ecological surveys should be compared to reference points and related to fishing effort to inform fisheries managers better. The here used approach highlights that integrating local knowledge, fisheries-dependent and independent information helps to identify areas and taxonomic groups of highest concern and guides future research efforts toward contributing better information for the management of data-poor fisheries.
There are two diverging views of the status and future of the world's fisheries. One group represented largely by academic marine ecologists sees almost universal failure of fisheries management and ...calls for the use of marine-protected areas as the central tool of a new approach to rebuilding the marine ecosystems of the world. The scientists working in fisheries agencies and many academic scientists see a more complex picture, with many failed fisheries but also numerous successes. This group argues that we need to apply the lessons from the successful fisheries to stop the decline and rebuild those fisheries threatened by excess fishing. These lessons are stopping the competitive race to fish by appropriate incentives for fishing fleets and good governance. The major tool of resetting incentives is granting various forms of dedicated access, including community-based fishing rights, allocation to cooperatives, and individual fishing quotas. Many of the failed fisheries of the world occur in jurisdictions where central governments are not functional, and local control of fisheries is an essential part of the solution.
Data from 4,713 fisheries worldwide, representing 78% of global reported fish catch, are analyzed to estimate the status, trends, and benefits of alternative approaches to recovering depleted ...fisheries. For each fishery, we estimate current biological status and forecast the impacts of contrasting management regimes on catch, profit, and biomass of fish in the sea. We estimate unique recovery targets and trajectories for each fishery, calculate the year-by-year effects of alternative recovery approaches, and model how alternative institutional reforms affect recovery outcomes. Current status is highly heterogeneous—the median fishery is in poor health (overfished,with further overfishing occurring), although 32% of fisheries are in good biological, although not necessarily economic, condition. Our business-as-usual scenario projects further divergence and continued collapse for many of the world’s fisheries. Applying sound management reforms to global fisheries in our dataset could generate annual increases exceeding 16 million metric tons (MMT) in catch, $53 billion in profit, and 619 MMT in biomass relative to business as usual. We also find that, with appropriate reforms, recovery can happen quickly, with the median fishery taking under 10 y to reach recovery targets. Our results show that commonsense reforms to fishery management would dramatically improve overall fish abundance while increasing food security and profits.
As the era of thriving, small-scale fishing communities continues to wane across waters that once teamed with (a way of) life, Fiona McCormack opens a window into contemporary fisheries quota ...systems, laying bare how neoliberalism has entangled itself in our approach to environmental management. Grounded in fieldwork in New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland and Hawaii, McCormack offers up a comparative analysis of the mechanisms driving the transformations unleashed by a new era of ocean grabbing. Exploring the processes of privatisation in ecosystem services, Private Oceans traces how value has been repositioned in the market, away from productive activities. The result? The demise of the small-scale sector, the collapse of fishing communities, cultural loss, and the emergence of a newly propertied class of producers - the armchair fisherman. Ultimately, Private Oceans demonstrates that the deviations from the capitalist norm explored in this book offer grounds for the reimagining of both fisheries economies and broader environmental systems.
Globally, cephalopods support large industrial-scale fisheries and small-scale to partly large-scale local artisanal fisheries. They are of increasing economic importance as evidenced by the rapid ...rise in their global landings from 1950 to 2014. Cephalopods are sensitive to environmental variability and climate change and many if not all species show wide fluctuations in abundance. This is most evident in ommastrephid nerito-oceanic squid since their life cycle is associated with boundary currents that are changing with climate change. The inter-annual variability in catch presents challenges for fishers and managers due to the 'boom-or-bust' nature of the fishery. A key barrier to rational management of squid fisheries is the low level of development of fishery forecasting. Despite substantial progress made in relating squid population dynamics to environmental variability and change, several challenges remain to develop forecast products to support squid fisheries management. Ideally, squid fisheries management needs a forecasting system that includes all time-scales of forecasting, and especially short - and medium-terms forecasts. The present overview first provides current knowledge of the effects of climate change and variability on squid population dynamics, challenges and opportunities to advance ecological-fishery forecast products, and finally a roadmap is proposed for future development of forecasts products to support squid sustainable fisheries management. As for the adoption of specific forecasting methods to the squid fishery management process, what is important is the relationship between needs, feasibility, and the ultimate success of a forecast will be determined by whether it is used by end-users.
Evaluating the success of natural resource management approaches requires methods to measure performance against biological, economic, social, and governance objectives. In fisheries, most research ...has focused on industrial sectors, with the contributions to global resource use by small-scale and indigenous hunters and fishers undervalued. Globally, the small-scale fisheries sector alone employs some 38 million people who share common challenges in balancing livelihood and lifestyle choices. We used as a case study a fishery with both traditional indigenous and commercial sectors to develop a framework to bridge the gap between quantitative bio-economic models and more qualitative social analyses. For many indigenous communities, communalism rather than capitalism underlies fishers’ perspectives and aspirations, and we find there are complicated and often unanticipated trade-offs between economic and social objectives. Our results highlight that market-based management options might score highly in a capitalistic society, but have negative repercussions on community coherence and equity in societies with a strong communal ethic. There are complex trade-offs between economic indicators, such as profit, and social indicators, such as lifestyle preferences. Our approach makes explicit the “triple bottom line” sustainability objectives involving trade-offs between economic, social, and biological performance, and is thus directly applicable to most natural resource management decision-making situations.
This paper fills an important gap towards adaptive management of small-scale fisheries by analyzing the gender dimension of fish trade in Zanzibar, Tanzania. We hypothesize that gender-based ...differences are present in the fish value chain and to test the hypothesis interviews were performed to analyze: (i) markets, customers, and mobility, (ii) material and economic resources, (iii) traded fish species, (iv) contacts and organizations, and (v) perceptions and experiences. Additionally, management documents were analyzed to examine the degree to which gender is considered. Results show that women traders had less access to social and economic resources, profitable markets, and high-value fish, which resulted in lower income. These gender inequalities are linked, among others, to women’s reproductive roles such as childcare and household responsibilities. Formal fisheries management was found to be gender insensitive, showing how a crucial feedback element of adaptive management is missing in Zanzibar’s management system, i.e., knowledge about key actors, their needs and challenges.
Consideration of economic outcomes is commonplace in most fisheries management systems globally, although only a few jurisdictions have adopted an economic objective as the primary target for ...fisheries management. Such an objective has been adopted for Australia's federally managed fisheries, with maximum economic yield (MEY) identified as the primary management objective. Correspondingly, target reference points defined in terms of biomass (i.e., B.sub.MEY) are used in harvest control rules. In the absence of explicit B.sub.MEY estimates, proxy estimates based on maximum sustainable yield (i.e., B.sub.MSY) are used. Identifying B.sub.MEY in multi-species fisheries is complicated as most stock assessments are undertaken at the individual species level, but economic activity occurs across species. This is further complicated when different fishing activities using different fishing gears and targeting practices (i.e., metiers) are present in a fishery. We employ an age-structured bioeconomic model to estimate B.sub.MEY for key species in a multi-species, multi-metier fishery. We find that optimal biomass levels are substantially higher than those assumed under the current proxy-based system, and that the economic targets are sensitive to prices and fishing costs, both of which change over time.
Fisheries are supposed to be for the benefit of society, producing food, providing livelihoods and enabling cultural continuity. Biological productivity goals for fish stocks operationalised through ...Harvest Control Rules (HCRs) are central to contemporary fisheries management. While fisheries policies often state socio‐economic objectives, such as enhancing the livelihoods of coastal communities, those are rarely, if ever, incorporated into operationalised management procedures. The lack of articulation of social objectives and lack of monitoring of social outcomes around HCRs amounts to poor public policy. In this article, we explore the potential for social HCRs (sHCRs) with reference points and agreed predefined actions to make the social dimensions of fisheries explicit. sHCRs cannot cover all social dimensions, so should be considered as one tool within a broader framework of fisheries governance. Moreover, successful sHCRs would require sound deliberative and participatory processes to generate legitimate social objectives, and monitoring and evaluation of fisheries management performance against those objectives. We introduce two potential types of sHCRs, one based on allocation of catch within biological limit reference points, and one for when fishing exceeds biological limit reference points. The application of sHCRs, we argue, can foster accountability and help avoid non‐transparent negotiations on size and distribution of the catch. Our proposal is a call to action for policy makers and fisheries managers to properly integrate social criteria into fisheries governance, and for both biophysical fisheries scientists and social scientists to do better in practical collaboration for methods and knowledge development to support this integration.
PDF
