Türkiye’de üçüncü kuşak balıkçı gemisi geri-alım programının analizi

Abstract

The third buy-back program in Turkey entered into force in 2014 with the Notice No. 29023 of the Official Gazette titled “Notice of Agricultural Support-Official Notice of Decommissioning of Fishing Vessels”, issued by the Directorate of Fishery and Aquaculture of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. This study is an evaluation of the third generation of the program. In this study, simple random sampling method was used to interview 89 vessel owners out of a total number of 191 vessels which are longer than 10 meters. The biggest number of buy-backs was in Marmara Region (38%), followed by the Agean (15%) and the Mediterranean (15%) regions. Most of the decommissioned vessels were 10-12 meters in length. The only fisher that benefited from the program was the owner of a vessel longer than 31 meters. The remaining 9 vessels were longer than 12 meters and shorter than 23 meters. In the scope of the program, 95% of the buy-back vessels are in the small-scale category. Among those, 41% of the vessels were in use for 3-90 days, while 4% had never been used within the year 2015. However, 60% of the owners who handed over their vessels also owned a second boat. Although 85% of the fishers employed a crew on-board and 73% of their crew were not family members, the fact that the program lacks a component for the crew can also be criticised. In conclusion; the third generation buy-back program bought a total of 191 vessels for 22.5 Million Turkish Liras ($8.3M US). However, since 77% of the interviewees continued fishing with their second boat and 26% bought a new boat with the support they were granted. Therefore all details of the results and the success of the buy-back programs should be evaluated by the authorities and future programs should be put into practice with necessary amendments.