Thailand's Missing Marine Fisheries Catch (1950–2014)

Brittany Derrick,Dirk Zeller,Pavarot Noranarttragoon,Lydia C L Teh,Daniel Pauly

doi:10.3389/fmars.2017.00402

Abstract

Overexploitation of marine resources has led to declining catches in many countries worldwide, and often also leads to fishing effort being exported to waters of neighboring countries or high seas areas. Thailand is currently under pressure to curb illegal fishing and human rights violations within its distant water fleets or face a European Union import ban. Simultaneously, Thailand is attempting to reduce fishing effort within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Crucial to these endeavors is a comprehensive knowledge of total fisheries catches over time. A reconstruction of fisheries catches within Thailand’s EEZ and by Thailand’s fleet in neighboring countries’ EEZs was undertaken for 1950-2014 to derive a comprehensive historical time series of total catches. This includes landings and discards that were not accounted for in official, reported statistics. Reconstructed Thai catches from within Thailand’s EEZ increased from approximately 400 000 t·year−1 in 1950 to a peak of 2.6 million t·year−1 in 1987, before declining to around 1.7 million t·year−1 in 2014. Catches taken by Thai vessels outside their own EEZ increased from 52 000 t·year−1 in 1965 to a peak of 7.6 million t·year−1 in 1996, before declining to around 3.7 million t·year−1 by 2014. In total, reconstructed catches were estimated to be nearly three times larger than data reported by Thailand to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Reconstructed Thai distant-water fleet catches were almost seven times higher than the comparable non-domestic catch deemed reported for Thailand. Thai landings from recreational fishing were conservatively estimated for the first time, and while they contributed less than 1% of current catch, they can be expected to grow in volume and importance with increasing tourism. As Thailand takes measures to reduce fishing effort within its EEZs and increases monitoring and enforcement of illegal and foreign fishing, it should take note of the present catch reconstruction as a comprehensive historical foundation that can point to needed improvements in data collection, policy development, and monitoring and enforcement.

Highlights

Catches from global fisheries have been declining since the mid1990s due to global overfishing, mainly by industrial fleets, and resource depletion in many areas (Pauly and Zeller, 2016a,b, 2017a)
FAO FishStatJ data were compared to national reports produced by Thailand’s Department of Fisheries (DoF) and found to provide a more comprehensive estimate of total reported catch for 1950–2014 for Indian and Pacific Ocean waters accessed by Thai fishing fleets, likely due to FAO’s harmonization of multiple data sources in addition to national data (Garibaldi, 2012)
Of the total reconstructed catch, 84% was attributed to the industrial sector, approximately 5% of which was discarded, 16% was assigned as small-scale fisheries and less than 1% was deemed from recreational fishing (Figure 2)

Summary

Introduction

Catches from global fisheries have been declining since the mid1990s due to global overfishing, mainly by industrial fleets, and resource depletion in many areas (Pauly and Zeller, 2016a,b, 2017a). Fisheries catch data are often the only information available on their fisheries (Pauly, 2013), and can be used for first-order evaluation of stock status (Froese et al, 2012, 2013; Kleisner et al, 2013). One method that can help countries to develop more comprehensive statistics for fisheries policy development and management is through a catch reconstruction approach, whereby components of catch that are not accounted for in official national statistics (e.g., due to resource limitations) are estimated using a variety of alternative information sources (Zeller et al, 2016). Catch reconstructions of fisheries data can provide comprehensive historical time series foundation of fisheries catches, and thereby overcome the “presentist bias” inherent in most official reported data time series (Zeller et al, 2007; Pauly and Zeller, 2017a)

Methods

Results

Conclusion