Measuring Seining Strategies and Fishing Success in the Philippines

Abstract

Maritime anthropologists often have argued that different fishing strategies or skipper skills partly account for variability in fishing success within a fleet, but statistical support for such strategies has been difficult to acquire. This article analyzes a mixed species, tropical seine fishery in south central Luzon, Philippines where boat size is similar and electronic fish-finding gear, mechanized hauling, and formal navigational training of skippers are absent. We review the qualitative and quantitative evidence for different fishing strategies in this fleet and then examine the degree to which these strategies account for differential fishing success. We suggest that one way to detect the existence of different seining strategies is to measure the locations fished, number of trips and type of species caught per time period. In fisheries where one is concerned to determine the degree to which fishing strategy accounts for variability in catch, we suggest that defining fishing success as mean catch per trip is more useful than conventional definitions of total catch over a season. The advantage of measuring fishing success as mean catch per trip rather than total catch is that it controls for effort, thereby allowing one to discern more clearly the variables that explain fishing strategy.