Utilization of vessel multi aid (VMA) as a smart fishing technology for small scale fisheries

Abstract

Fishing businesses in Indonesia are generally small-scale fishing fisheries, which is highly dependent on season and weather conditions. In the Palabuhan Ratu, the area of West Java, the capture fisheries mostly operate a fishing boat under 10 GT. Various techniques to increase the success of fishing efforts in Pelabuhan Ratu have been carried out, one of them is by testing the use of vessel multi aid (VMA). The study aimed to examine the effectiveness of fishing aids in increasing the catch of fishermen by using the VMA on several fishing vessels in Pelabuhan Ratu. The experiment was conducted from September to November 2019 on ten payang fishing vessels with a capacity of 2GT - 5 GT, using YUKOM VMA. YUKOM VMA is a fishing aid using radio waves and has features: fishing area information, weather condition information, SOS, which can be used during emergencies and e-logbook for recording catches. The results showed that the average fish catch per trip tended to increase by 58.08% per trip. This suggests that the use of fishing aids technology in the form of VMA in small-scale fishing efforts may be an effective way of increasing the catch.