The future of the wild capture fisheries industry looks very bleak, Overall catch is declining resulting in continued reduction of incomes among fisherfolks. In the last six years, poverty rates among fisherfolks increased from 30% to 40%. If the number of fishers is 1.6 million, we are talking about 450 thousand families!
What the new leadership in the agriculture and fisheries sector could do is focus on the single most pressing problem: declining fisheries productivity caused by inability of BFAR and the LGUs to effectively address OVERFISHING.
The issue is not new. As early as the mid 1970's, groundfish- and reef-based resources and in the mid 1980's for the pelagic resources, fisheries scientists have brought the issue to the fore. But this issue was addressed not be regulating fishing but by expanding to new fishing grounds and allowing the number of fishers to increase to a level that no sane politician will touch this issue with a ten feet pole. Regulating the number of fishers has social and economic consequences. The mantra of previous leaders to address this issue using paltry solutions and leave the next leadership to tackle this problem, has allowed the problem to reach a level of humongous proportions!
Today, we have exhausted all fishing grounds up to our EEZ and some of our fishers, both large and small scale poach in neighboring countries! No wonder, fishers travel for 4-5 days non stop to reach the highly volatile fishing grounds of the Spratly Island groups, creating another subgroup of OFWs: overseas fisheries workers that are separated from their families most of the time under high risk.
It is of no surprise too that fishers that opted to remain fish in nearshore waters undertake illegal fishing as they have nowhere to go and they need to feed their families.
How do you solve the problem of OVERFISHING:
Simply said, solving overfishing means reducing the amount of fishing pressure to a level that will generate the sustainable yield. What are the necessary actions to solve this problem?
1. Find innovative ways to reduce fishing intensity - it takes a combination of policies to effectively reduce fishing intensity. The ways to do this will depend on the amount of excess capacity to be reduced and in consideration of the socio-economic impacts.
2. Generate Science to support policy - getting the accurate information on level of fish biomass and fishing effort are the two essential information to determine how much reduction of fishing effort to be done and what level of population is aimed for.
3. Invest in capacity building for research - we need more scientists to analyze information that process data into bases for policy.
4. Provide sufficient funds for fisheries research. BFAR will need to invest at least 10% of the of its budget to undertake research, in order to fund cost of research.
5. Reform governance framework that provides a seamless management of fisheries resources irrespective of fishing area or fishing grounds between municipal and commercial waters.
What the new leadership in the agriculture and fisheries sector could do is focus on the single most pressing problem: declining fisheries productivity caused by inability of BFAR and the LGUs to effectively address OVERFISHING.
The issue is not new. As early as the mid 1970's, groundfish- and reef-based resources and in the mid 1980's for the pelagic resources, fisheries scientists have brought the issue to the fore. But this issue was addressed not be regulating fishing but by expanding to new fishing grounds and allowing the number of fishers to increase to a level that no sane politician will touch this issue with a ten feet pole. Regulating the number of fishers has social and economic consequences. The mantra of previous leaders to address this issue using paltry solutions and leave the next leadership to tackle this problem, has allowed the problem to reach a level of humongous proportions!
Today, we have exhausted all fishing grounds up to our EEZ and some of our fishers, both large and small scale poach in neighboring countries! No wonder, fishers travel for 4-5 days non stop to reach the highly volatile fishing grounds of the Spratly Island groups, creating another subgroup of OFWs: overseas fisheries workers that are separated from their families most of the time under high risk.
It is of no surprise too that fishers that opted to remain fish in nearshore waters undertake illegal fishing as they have nowhere to go and they need to feed their families.
How do you solve the problem of OVERFISHING:
Simply said, solving overfishing means reducing the amount of fishing pressure to a level that will generate the sustainable yield. What are the necessary actions to solve this problem?
1. Find innovative ways to reduce fishing intensity - it takes a combination of policies to effectively reduce fishing intensity. The ways to do this will depend on the amount of excess capacity to be reduced and in consideration of the socio-economic impacts.
2. Generate Science to support policy - getting the accurate information on level of fish biomass and fishing effort are the two essential information to determine how much reduction of fishing effort to be done and what level of population is aimed for.
3. Invest in capacity building for research - we need more scientists to analyze information that process data into bases for policy.
4. Provide sufficient funds for fisheries research. BFAR will need to invest at least 10% of the of its budget to undertake research, in order to fund cost of research.
5. Reform governance framework that provides a seamless management of fisheries resources irrespective of fishing area or fishing grounds between municipal and commercial waters.
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