Sustainable Fishing Methods in Asia Pacific Region

Abstract

After the Second World War, marine fishery industry was developed to a commercial industrial fishery by war torn countries to boost their economies. As a result, compared to traditional pole and line fishery , much larger fishing gears such as trawls and purse seines , and much larger and more powerful fishing vessels were built, and deployed to traditional fisheries grounds in the southern hemisphere. Although this led to an increase in the global marine catch in several folds, many fisheries around the world, however, have collapsed and depleted due to the over effort and overexploitation. Further, many marine resources have been destroyed as non-targeted by catch by ill-designed industrial scale fishing gears such as bottom trawls and purse seines. World-wide annual marine bycatch is around 27 million tonnes, and for bottom trawls 66–93% of the catch consists of bycatch while this is 64–79% for purse seine. Moreover, benthic marine environment around the world has been affected drastically by the bottom trawl fleet. Today, reduced industrial commercial fleet, and tough fishing regulations in developed countries have made a considerable progress towards reducing the fishing effort and hence the reduced bycatch and discards. Although modifications of industrial bottom trawls and purse seines have made a progress in reducing the bycatch to a certain extent, these fishing gears are fundamentally unsustainable. Customer interest on ‘sustainably caught’ fish and hence marine stewardship is increasing in developed countries. To this end, pole and line fishery should be propagated around the world as one of the best sustainable fishing method. Also, Ecosystem based fisheries management and small scale regional fisheries management should be the future approach in fisheries management as local knowledge on the local marine ecosystem can be used together with the participation of local fisher folks.