Abstract
The problem of overexploitation in global fisheries is well-recognized. However, published assessment of fisheries spatio-temporal trends at the national scale is lacking for many high biodiversity developing countries, which is problematic since fisheries management is often implemented at the local or national levels. Here, we present the long-term spatio-temporal trends of Philippine fisheries production based on the landed national fish catch data (1980-2012) and fishers’ interviews. We found that the total Philippine fish catch volume (Metric Tons MT) of most capture fisheries throughout the country has either stagnated or declined over the last three decades. The decline is even more prominent when evaluating fisheries trends at the provincial level, suggesting spatial serial depletion of the country’s fisheries. In contrast, the total Philippine fish catch value (US Dollars US$ or Philippine Pesos PHP) has continued to increase over time, despite the declining fish catch volume. However, local municipal fishers are experiencing both low fish catch and income, contributing to observable poverty in many coastal communities in the Philippines. The various stakeholders of Philippine fisheries need to recognize the depleted state of Philippine fisheries, and learn from various experiences of collapsed and recovered fisheries from around the world, in order to recover the Philippines’ capture fisheries. Lessons from the literature on collapsed fisheries offer the following options for recovery: (1) regulate or reduce fisheries exploitation and other human activities impacting the fisheries to allow fisheries to rebuild or recover, (2) enforce effective networks of marine reserves, (3) engage fishers, consumers, and other stakeholders in fisheries management, (4) improve fisheries science, monitoring, and management capacities, and (5) provide alternative livelihood, skills, and improved education to fishers and their families.
Highlights
The state of global fisheries is continuously declining, with catch rates falling since the 1980’s (Pauly et al, 2002)
This study presents the most recent spatio-temporal analysis of Philippine fisheries production based on landed national fish catch and fishers’ interview data
Froese et al (2012) showed that fish catch data are consistent with trends in biomass data of fully-assessed stocks, refuting claims on the limited usefulness and misleading nature of fisheries-dependent data
Summary
The state of global fisheries is continuously declining, with catch rates falling since the 1980’s (Pauly et al, 2002). Despite this declining trend in fisheries production, global fishing effort has been continuously increasing (Anticamara et al, 2011). The world’s fisheries have resorted to geographic, bathymetric, and taxonomic expansion to cover for declining catches in overexploited fishing grounds (Pauly, 2009). The global catch biomass of large predatory fish is estimated to be between 10% (Myers and Worm, 2003) and 60% (Juan-Jorda et al, 2011) of pre-industrial fishing levels, with most stocks fullyexploited, limiting further expansion of these important fisheries. FAO (2012) reported that in 2009, 57.4% of global fish stocks were fully-exploited, 29.9% were overexploited, and only 12.7% were non-fully exploited
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