SUSTAINABLE FISHERIES Keynote address, 10 ifaf, 2014

PROF. MOHAN JOSEPH MODAYIL

EX ASRB & EX CMFRI

mohanjosephmodayil@gmail.com

© MODAYIL 2014

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed here are

my personal views

and do not reflect those of the organizations

affiliated, past and present

Preamble

• The theme of 10 ifaf is: Towards

Responsible Aquaculture and Sustainable

Fisheries

• My discussion today will be very basic, with

out mathematical models and technical

jargon, a simplified statement of realities

• Today my intention is to bring to focus some

misconceptions and scientific inadequacies

• Addressing these will help us understand

the complexities of sustainable fisheries in

the Indian context

This discussion has the following:

1.Understanding fisheries

2.Understanding sustainability

3.Approaches to sustainability

4.Current and emerging threats

5.Knowledge, Management and

Governance deficits

6.Quo vadis ?

Background

• Fishing is the catching of aquatic wildlife, like hunting wildlife

on the land. There are no human inputs, but only exploitation

of a natural resource. Most industrial-scale fishing across the

world are not sustainable.

• However, most people believe that unspecified

'environmental changes, pollution, climate change’

caused, and continue to cause the collapse of most fisheries.

• In reality the major causes of decline in fisheries are

indiscriminate, unregulated, open access, destructive fishing

by human beings.

• History of fishing makes it clear that humans have had for

thousands of years a major impact on target species and

their supporting ecosystems. Human fishing has undergone

gradual shifts through time, to smaller sizes and the serial

depletion of species. Today we recognize these changes as

symptoms of overfishing. (Pauly, 2002)

UNDERSTANDING FISHERIES

What are fisheries ?

• “The sum (or range) of all fishing activities on a given

resource. It may also refer to the activities of a single

type or style of, fishing The fishery can be artisanal,

or/and industrial, commercial, subsistence, and

recreational, and can be annual or seasonal”- FAO

• “Activity of catching fish, from one or more stocks of

fish, that can be treated as a unit for purposes of

conservation and management and that is identified on

the basis of geographic, scientific, technical,

recreational, social or economic characteristics, and/or

method of catch”. – FAO

• “Fishery” simply refers to the activities involved in

catching a species of fish or shellfish, or a group of

species that share the same habitat.-NOAA

Fisheries are mostly misunderstood

• Misunderstood by scientists, research institutions,

government, scientific societies and academies and

the public

• Generally, anything related to or associated with fish

is deemed to be FISHERIES

• Thus, aquaculture, biotechnology, genetics,

microbiology, processing technology, economics,

pathology sociology……. are all treated as

Fisheries as some fish is used in the study process.

• Even scientific Academies and Societies have not

understood the meaning of fisheries and go on

conferring fellowships / awarding research grants

under Fisheries category on such non-fisheries

scientists / subjects.

• This myopic view has damaged the spirit of true

fisheries research in India and even mandated

institutions have moved away to more “attractive” and

“visible” subjects where recognition comes easily.

• The skewed understanding of the science of fisheries

has damaged and continue to damage the collection

and analysis of scientific information which are much

needed for management and governance of the

capture fisheries of the country.

• The responsibility for this sad state of affairs lies with

scientists, science managers and government/policy

institutions

• Fisheries is natural resource and principles and

practices of natural resource management are

needed for ensuring sustainability

Components of Indian fisheries

• Hill stream fisheries

• Riverine fisheries

• Lacustrine fisheries

• Reservoir fisheries

• Brackish water fisheries

• Traditional livelihood fisheries

• Coastal fisheries

• Offshore multiday fisheries

• Deep sea fisheries

• Oceanic fisheries for straddling stock

• Island fisheries

Why these data are important ?

• Other than catch details, species composition,

seasonal abundance, breeding periods, fish

biology, bionomics, much needed information

on assessing their sustainability are not

available except for most marine and few

riverine species.

• Classifying fisheries in to sustainable,

moderately sustainable, non-sustainable

becomes unscientific and meaningless in the

absence of supporting data analysis.

• Thus fisheries are to be examined by applying

recognized yardsticks of sustainability.

UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABILITY

What is Sustainability ?

Defining sustainability

Sustainable fisheries

may be defined as the

stewardship of the

fisheries resources so

as to provide economic

and social benefits for

the present while

conserving the

renewable resource

base for future

generations ( Canadian

Department of Fish and Oceans)

Sustainability misconceptions

• Many governmental agencies believe that steady or

increasing annual catch from capture fisheries is an

indication of sustainability. This is not true.

• Such misconceptions at policy and governance levels

contribute to the misery as more boats are put to

fishing, more harbours are built, more bycath is

landed, more products are developed from bycatch

and more subsidies are doled out.

• Lack of understanding and inability and unwillingness

to listen to proper scientific advice is destroying our

fisheries wealth, the less said the better.

• Responsibility for unsustainability lies with the fishing

industry, governmental policy and support agencies,

researchers, industry and export promotions

Use of MSY and MEY models

• MSY and MEY models are no longer useful because of

changed situations (Pauly, 2001)

• These models or modified forms of these are still in use

• The belief that adjusting fishing effort to some optimum level

should generate 'maximum sustainable' yield, a notion that the

fishing industry and the regulatory agencies eagerly adopted, is

only a theoretical concept. It has no relevance today.

• In practice, optimum effort levels were very rarely implemented

Rather the fisheries expanded their reach, both offshore, by fishing

deeper waters and remote sea areas, and by moving onto

untapped resources

• Unfortunately increase in annual catch (because of increased

fishing effort, use of smaller mesh, catching juveniles, new fishing

grounds being accessed, destructive fishing) have been liked by

fisheries governance and planning agencies who continue to

support increasing effort when there is already a huge over

capacity of fishing fleet.

• FAO , NOAA, WORLD BANK, DFID, MSC have developed

indices for assessing sustainability

• There is not yet a comprehensive and inclusive model for

assessing sustainability although some are being evolved

and tested.

• Criteria used by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)

and the RAPFISH appear to be promising tools in

assessment of sustainability

• MSC is a certification process and takes a few years of

study for a green certification. On 5th of November, India

received its first MSC certification for the short neck clam

fishery of Keala, thanks to the efforts of the CMFRI which

were initiated in 2006. This is the third species in Asia out

of the 244 certified so far across the world.

• The fact that only 3 species were certified in Asia which is

the major fish provider to the world speaks well about how

unsustainable our fisheries are.

MSC principles of sustainability

– Principle 1. Target species ( High productivity, Recovery

plan, Reproductive capacity)

– Principle 2. Ecosystem ( Functional relationships,

Biodiversity and ETP spp, Recovery plan)

– Principle 3. Management system :

• A Management system criteria - No controversial unilateral

exemption, Clear long-term objectives, appropriate to cultural

context and scale, observe legal and customary rights,

dispute resolution mechanism, Incentives, no negative

subsidies, timely, adaptive, precautionary, research plan,

stock assessments conducted, mgmt measures and

strategies compliance.

• B Operational criteria: Bycatch and discards, habitat

impacts, destructive fishing practices, operational waste, legal

and admin requirements, collaboration in data collection

RAPFISH model for sustainability

evaluation

• RAPFISH (Pitcher & Preikshot,2001)

• Simple, easily scored attributes to provide

rapid, cost effective, multidisciplinary

approach for comparative levels of

sustainability.

• Multivariate ordinations of scored attributes

evaluate fishing status within ecological,

technological, economic, social and ethical

contexts.

• Weakness of this method: perception

differences and data inadequacies can yield

skewed results

Data requirements for RAPFISH

• Ecological (including fish population parameters

and environment)

• Economic (including both micro and macro

economic factors)

• Ethical (including industrial and community

factors)

• Social (including social and anthropological

factors)

• Technological (including gear and fishing

characteristics)

DATA REQUIREMENTS FOR RAPFISH

• Ecological (Exploitation status, recruitment variability, trophic level &

change, migratory range, size of fish caught, catch before maturity, discarded

bycatch, species caught, primary production)

• Economic ( Fishing in GDP, Per person GDP, market right, other income,

sectoral employment, ownership, market subsidy)

• Sociological ( Socialization of fishery, fishing community growth, fishing

sector, environmental knowledge, education level, conflict status, fishing

income, kin participation)

• Technological ( Trip length, landing rights, presale processing, use of

ice, gear, selective gear / power gear)

• Ethical ( Adjacency & relevance, alternatives, equity in entry to fishery, just

management, influences-ethical formation, mitigation=habitat destruction,

migration-ecosystem depletion, Illegal fishing, discards & waste)

• Code of Conduct (Intentions: Management objectives, framework,

precautionary approaches. Results: Stocks, fleet & gear, social & economic,

monitoring, surveillance & control (MCS)

RAPFISH analysis: Sustainability status scores from

simulated fisheries plotted against time. Here the

vertical axis runs from 0% (`bad') to 100% ( ‘good’)

(Source: Pitcher & Preikshot, 2001)

Indicators of Sustainability

• Maintenance and re-establishment of healthy

targeted fish populations

• Maintenance of ecosystem integrity

• Development and maintenance of effective

fisheries management system

• Compliance with relevant local and national

laws and standards and international

understandings and agreements

• Biological indicators include stock status

relative to biological reference points like

spawning biomass, size at maturity vs capture,

age structure, mean size, fishing mortality,

exploitation and recruitment rates.

Current and emerging threats to

sustainability • Lack of stock assessment information on hill stream

fisheries, riverine fisheries, reservoir fisheries and

lacustrine fisheries.

• Inability to use such information, when available,

for informed fisheries management

• Over capacity of fishing fleet in marine sector

• Indiscriminate and destructive fishing methods

• Lack of implementable, inclusive marine fishing

policy

• Lack of implementation of regulatory measures

• Negative subsidies and incentives which promote

unregulated fishing

Knowledge deficit, Management deficit,

Governance deficit

• Governance and policy frameworks do not make

use of knowledge and wisdom of mandated

institutions while formulating guidelines, regulations

and policies. Instead committees of bureaucrats

with no fisheries knowledge are formed for policies

and guidelines

• Inability of government in reducing overcapacity

and implementation of guidelines and regulations

across the country

• Unregulated promotion of growth of fishing fleet,

fishing activities, incentives for bycatch utilization, bad subsidies, populist measures

• Lack of a national fisheries policy binding on all

stakeholders

Quo vadis ? • There are a few pelagic and small scale regional fisheries

which are robust and sustainable. Eg. Tuna, Sardines,

Anchovies, clams, cephalopods, Bombay duck

• Except for such few fisheries, in general, the Indian

fisheries are likely to be unsustainable, unless we have

analytical data to the contrary

• Lack of a desire to move in to a regulated and sustainable

mode is a major concern

• Collapse of many stressed fisheries will not be distant

possibility

• Unless India move on to a regulated mode from an open

access fishery, it will be not only collapse of our fisheries,

but also rejection of our fishery products for want of

certification on sustainability

• It is time for the mandated institutions to come out with

proper analysis using modern tools

• The time to act is now or never

THANK YOU

FOR YOUR TIME