The major shortcomings of the previous survey system were: (i) the lack of national fisheries statistical standards in the system; (ii) lack of source documents for data collection and reporting to the DGF, and (iii) absence of a proper survey design and instructions for data collection.
Of the three shortcomings above, the absence of “national fishery statistical standards” was the most serious one. Because of that, as an example, in some provinces although nonpowered boats were classified into size groups, i.e., small, medium and large, there were differences in the size categories between provinces. Also, in some provinces, powered boats were classified into outboard powered boats and inboard powered boats but in other provinces there was no such classification. As a result, at the national level there were no data available of the number of powered boats classified into these basic classes, i.e., outboard and inboard powered boats. In some provinces, species classifications were available but such classification were different even among neighbouring provinces. In other provinces there was no species classification. Because of this, until recent years it was difficult for Indonesia to produce catch statistics by species.
Lack of nationally designed reporting forms had also caused some serious problems in the production of fishery statistics. Until 1972, fishery statistics of Indonesia had been compiled by using the information available in the supplement of the Annual Fisheries Administrative Report (Laporan Tahunan) compiled by the Provincial Fishery Service (PFS). Extreme delays in the issuance of administrative reports for certain provinces made it difficult to compile fishery statistics at the national level on time. A type of yearbook of fishery statistics issued for the first time in Indonesia was “The Fact and Figures”, which dealt with the 1971 fishery statistics. Since then, the “Yearbook of Fishery Statistics, Indonesia” has been issued annually. However, for reasons given, a timely issuance of the yearbook had never been realized.
Careful studies were made of the reliability of previous fishery statistics in Java and the results are summarized in Appendix 1. It was noted that, from the viewpoint of the users, fishery statistics available at that time had the following shortcomings:
discontinuity in the established fisheries time series;
owing to the difference in statistical coverage even basic statistics, such as total catch, were not properly calculated between neighbouring provinces:
catch statistics seem to have been very much underestimated.
