The country situation paper of Indonesia (Annex E) was presented, followed by discussions in which a number of salient points were highlighted.
The rapid mechanization of small fishing boats of less than 10 GT coupled with the introduction of more effective fishing gear had resulted in a state of overexploitation of the available resources especially along the coastal stretch, within which small rural boats operated. Recognizing its resource limitations and the need to resolve conflicts among the fishermen with respect to the usage of such resources, the Government had to impose the banning of the trawl fishery.
Although the small-scale sector has annually contributed about 76 percent of the national marine fish production, the majority of the half a million fishermen who make up this production force continued to exist below the poverty line. This was largely due to the low technical and managerial know-how, low bargaining position in marketing the produce, low financial capabilities and limited access to useful resources.
To alleviate these and other related problems, the Government had adopted specific development policies and objectives. The strategies for the implementation and attainment of the established development objectives include: (a) a more equitable distribution of development and its gains, leading to the welfare of the entire population: (b) a sufficient high economic growth; and (c) a sound and dynamic national stability.
The current status of the rural coastal fisheries in Malaysia (Annexes F-H) was presented for the Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah areas. Although these areas differ in characteristics of their fisheries and living resources, the current low standard of living among the small-scale, rural coastal fishermen is a hard-pressed problem common to all these three areas.
This situation was attributed to a number of major reasons such as the immobility of the small fishermen, limitations of their craft and gear with respect to resource accessibility, and low levels of fishing technology (as in the case of Sabah); and the overall trend of declining stocks of available resources (with particular reference to the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia).
Although the annual landings of demersal fish off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia have been far below the estimated levels of the MSY, the remaining portion of these resources are thought to be taken by foreign vessels. This appears to present not only a fishery management problem to the country, but also makes resource management difficult to impossible. Under the circumstance, the only course of action is to strengthen/adopt an effective monitoring, control and surveillance scheme.
While it is thought that little potential exists for increasing production of demersal resources by small-scale rural coastal fishermen, there is a potential for developing available pelagic resources along the east coast. Detailed planning is required however, to determine appropriate methods of product utilization, the types of fishing methods and gear to be adopted, and the required infrastructure to support such developments.
To resolve this urgent need to improve the livelihood of the small fishermen, consideration must be given to finding alternative sources of income. The introduction of coastal aquaculture was considered to offer high potentials in this respect, but the lack of the required seeds and feeds appear to present some constraints to this development. At the same time, the Government is also attempting to absorb the surplus fishermen force into rural resettlement projects.
The current status of the municipal fisheries in the Philippines was presented, followed by discussions in which a number of salient points were highlighted.
Municipal fisheries in the Philippines is considered as the largest segment of the fishing industry. Its contribution to the country's annual fish production was around 55 to 60 percent of the total catch in 1980. Its contribution to the national economy was approximately 3 percent of the annual GNP and provided employment to about 5 percent of the Philippine working force. This sector was estimated to provide a livelihood to some 600 000 Filipinos who live in the fishing communities scattered in coastal villages throughout the country.
Although the municipal fisheries form the largest component of the fishing industry, the living standards and socio-economic conditions of the small-scale fishermen are roughly half the poverty thresholds and are further deteriorating. The increasing fishing intensity in the municipal areas have caused overfishing, and coupled with the destruction of coral reefs by fishing with dynamite and the use of fine-meshed nets, catches have considerably decreased. The real income of small-scale fishermen is therefore declining. The Government has allocated huge resources in various development programmes such as credit programmes, Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran (KKK), training programmes for small-scale fishermen, seafarming promotion, etc., in an attempt to alleviate the hardship of the municipal fishermen. It was generally considered that aquaculture has a significant role to play in overcoming the present socio-economic status of the poverty-stricken fishermen.
There are however, problems surrounding the low income of small-scale fishermen having no clearcut/exclusive solutions, but requiring an interplay of many interrelated factors. It was not merely the provision of credit for the acquisition of boats and gears, or the enforcement of fisheries administrative orders that would dispel poverty. Rather, the complexities of the situation demand thorough planning for strong implementation mechanisms based upon an adequate and reliable municipal data base.
The current status of the small-scale rural coastal fishermen in Thailand was presented, followed by discussions from which a number of salient points were highlighted.
The fishery resources situation in Thailand are very much different from other countries of the region since the available resources have already been overexploited in areas utilized by both the small-scale and the commercial sectors. The problems facing the small-scale fishermen in Thailand are primarily low incomes due to low catches-per-unit-of-effort, and low price of the catch because of the high percentage of small, undersized species of comparatively low preference.
In considering its causes, it seems that the problems have been generated mainly within the small-scale fisheries itself. The overfishing situation appears to have arisen from the fact that there are too many fishermen and therefore the level of fishing effort has been too high. Another cause was illegal fishing in nursery grounds by push nets and beam trawls, both of which were very effective in catching small-sized fish. There were also other problems generated from outside the small-scale fishery sector, such as the adverse effects of water pollution, rising fuel costs and the declaration of the exclusive economic zone by neighbouring coastal states which tend to confine the commercial Thai vessels within Thai waters.
Since fishery resources for capture fisheries in Thailand are already overexploited, any management measure can not solve the immediate problems of the small-scale fishermen unless a drastic reduction in the number of fishermen is enforced. Therefore, the best solution to solve the present problems would appear to encourage fishermen to leave the capture sector and go into other businesses. For the remaining fishermen, proper management measures have to be practised in order to improve the resource situation and maintain good catches for the fishermen.
Considering the successful production of seeds of some commercially important species in Thailand through established technology in artificial spawning of the species. together with the fact that there are still considerable coastal areas available for aquaculture activities which comprise approximately 28 500 ha of shallow waters and 16 000 ha of coastal lands, the Government of Thailand, through the Department of Fisheries, gives high priority to the development of coastal aquaculture as an alternative source of income for small-scale fishermen. The development of coastal aquaculture in Thailand has however many inherent problems, of which the acid sulphate soil is perhaps the greatest constraint limiting the utilization of coastal lands for aquaculture activities. Another problem is the high level of production costs viz-a-viz yield rates. These problems have to be overcome in order to maximize the potential benefit of coastal lands for aquaculture.
The fact that various resource management measures previously practised did not seem to work, was primarily due to problems of law enforcement and the difficulty of having applicable alternative methods to protect the nursery grounds of the species. As regard the latter, one method was to lease the area to the fishermen to be developed into mollusc farms, in which no fishing gear would be allowed to operate. Another approach was to construct artificial reefs as sanctuaries for the fish. These would enable the fish population to be reestablished and any exploitation of such fish stocks would be limited to selective gears and fishing seasons.
A session was devoted to the introduction of some ongoing small-scale and rural coastal fisheries development projects. Included were the ICLARM's multidisciplinary research in San Miguel Bay, Philippines, the CIDA-financed integrated fisheries development project in Kuala Besut, Malaysia, and the SIDA-financed aquaculture demonstration project in Phang Nga, Thailand.
With the exception of the former, the latter two projects did reveal the potential benefits of aquaculture as an additional source of income and employment.
With regards to the San Miguel Bay study, the primary problem confronting development appears to have arisen from the inherent conflicts in resource utilization between the commercial and small-scale sectors.
