POTENTIAL FISH GROUND BREEDING AREA BASED ON LOCALIZED CRITERIA FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY

Abstract

Abstract. Fish are the part of marine ecosystem and play an important role as contributors of nutrients and dependent on the ecosystem which is affected by the parameters to provide the right conditions for reproduction. Artificial reefs were being applied as an approach to sustain food security. Food security is a major concern for all countries in the face of population increase and diminishing water supplies including in the fisheries sector. Hence, artificial reefs become one of the methods to improve the preservation of fish supplies. Suitable environment for fish ground breeding area need to be identified in order to place the artificial reef. Therefore, this study is proposed to locate the potential fish ground breeding area in Terengganu, Malaysia based on localized criteria which is suitable to place the artificial reefs by examining the parameters in the area. Parameters that have been studied were water temperature, water salinity, water acidity, chlorophyll concentration and dissolve oxygen. Those parameters have their own criteria that represent the suitability for fish population. Localized data have been applied in order to analyse and support localized criteria for this study area. To locate the potential fish ground breeding area, Geographic Information System (GIS), Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Spatial Interpolation and Weighted Analysis have been applied. For MCDA, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to get the weightage of the parameters by running Pairwise Comparisons between the selected parameters using AHP software, Expert Choice. Then, those parameters weightage were applied in weighted analysis to identify the potential ground breeding area. At the end of this study, final map showing the location for fish ground breeding area. The final output resulted potential location for fish ground breeding area in four classes which are very high, high, medium and low potential area. This study may facilitate the decision makers to place the artificial reefs in potential area to increase fish population.