EDFish

Selected tag(s): Design

TURF Tools: Exploring tools to help restore small-scale fisheries

Photo: Kaia Joye Moyer

Photo: Kaia Joye Moyer

By:  Kaia Joye Moyer, Masters Student at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management

It is 5am. The sun is just rising, but Hermes Arandas, a fisher from Totolan, Dauis, Bohol in the Philippines, is anything but just waking up. Today he and six fellow fishers are pulling their banca, a long slender outrigger canoe into the boat landing area. The men left the harbor at 4 pm the previous day and have been out fishing all night.  Hermes tells me that he remembers fishing with his father. Back then, the fish were not far from shore, but today they can’t be found there.  In order to continue to support his family, Hermes must fish farther and longer because catch is decreasing and fish are getting smaller.

Unfortunately Hermes is not alone in his story. More than 90% of the fishermen around the world are small-scale fishers like Hermes, mostly living in developing nations. And while these fishers provide half of the global fish catch, they are also particularly vulnerable to overfishing because they rely on fish for both their livelihood and food source

It is stories like Hermes’ that brought us to the Philippines.

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Catch Share Conversations: A look at Catch Share Design Options — Harvesting Cooperatives

Catch Share ConversationsOnce managers and fishermen decide to implement a catch share program, the next critical step in achieving the conservation, economic and social goals of the fishery is to effectively design the catch share program. Catch shares management is not a one-size-fits-all approach; rather programs are designed to meet the specific needs and goals of each fishery. From determining who holds the allocation privilege to how shares or quota are allocated to whether or not allocation is transferable, there are many factors to consider along the way of designing an effective catch share management system.

Our new monthly EDFish series, Catch Share Conversations, takes a look at some of these decision points or conversations in the design process. This month we offer a look at harvesting cooperatives, which have a variety of benefits and some challenges.

In harvesting cooperatives, groups of organized fishery participants jointly manage secure and exclusive access to the fishery. In return for this privilege, cooperatives are accountable for operating a sustainable fishery within the scientifically determined catch limit and/or dedicated area. Examples of cooperatives include the New England groundfish sectors program and the Bering Sea’s Pollock Conservation Cooperative.

You can read our Catch Share Conversations Backgrounder for a deeper look at harvesting cooperatives. In the next few days on EDFish, we’ll also share three specific case studies of cooperative-based catch shares.

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We Seek Your Expertise; EDF Releases Catch Shares Design Manual for Public Comment

Draft Catch Shares Design Manual - For public commentEffective design of a catch share program is the critical piece that can make all the difference in how the needs of a fishery and its fishing communities are met under catch shares management. Catch Shares Design Manual: A Guide for Fishermen and Managers provides information and recommendations to fishery managers and stakeholders on specific catch share design elements as they relate to conservation, economic, and social objectives.

EDF developed this manual to provide a roadmap to catch share design, drawing on the experience of hundreds of fisheries in over a dozen countries and expertise from over 30 fishery experts from around the world.

While the Manual is comprehensive, it is not prescriptive: It is a series of questions whose answers help guide and inform the catch share design process.  Detailed discussions of various design elements are coupled with tools (including charts, check-lists, and case studies) to outline and highlight options.

Today, we release the draft of the Manual and ask for your constructive feedback and comments. We seek your expertise to make the document even better and will incorporate comments into the final version to be released later this year.  We hope you will contribute to this document.  Please go to www.edf.org/catchshares to provide your review before September 30.

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