WORLD’S OPINIONS ON THE FISHERY STOCK MANAGEMENT Yasuko Semba, Kotaro Yokawa, and Miki Ogura
National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries, Fisheries Research Agency
Global situation over fishery stock managements
Recently, there is a growing concern about the sustainable use of natural resources. This tendency accelerates the recognition on promoting the sustainable fishery by the appropriate stock management and the aspect for conservation of ecosystem throughout the ocean range from the coastal to the deep sea. Looking back the history of the fish stock managements, the movements of the protection of the environments and fish stocks occurred in several time, e.g., when the many nations introduced the 200 miles zone as their exclusive economic zone, many scientists and managers stressed the importance of the protection of fish stocks, and also, when the principal of precautionary approach was defined, same situation was occurred.
The notable difference of the recent world movements of the environmental protection from those in the past is that the recent movements has great supports by the popular opinion especially in the Europe and North America, and also, the public opinion in these countries demands the environmental protection in the world wide scale, not only in the area related to them, but also in the area they do not have direct relationship. This means the power and the influence of the recent world movements of the environmental protection is higher than those in the past. Thus, Asian courtiers including Japan should take the positive actions to cope with this world movement to support our fisheries and fish stocks.
Traditionally, the regulation for fishery used to be implemented only when sufficient information about stock status is available. Unfortunately, the collection of “sufficient information” took too long to save the fishery and fish stock from the introduction of moratorium. By learning from these unfortunate experiences, the idea of precautionary approach was developed. However, the discussions about how long we should be precautionary are still going on, and still there seem some gaps among scientists, managers as well as stakeholders of fisheries. At the same time, the governments and environmental groups in Europe and North America are trying to spread the idea of precautionary approach and necessity of protection of environments to all over the world by receiving strong supports of their public opinions.
One of the symbolic topics for the current movements of the protection of the environments and fish stocks is the opinion that “fisher should take responsibilities to prove the fact that their fishery is clean”. This idea, however, is not widely accepted in the world, and it exposes the severe aspect of the recent situation around the world fishery. Under such hard situation which arose in the western countries, we should recognize that we could not continue our fishery as in the 10 years ago. Though the current environmental movement demands many changes to fisheries, the final goal of coexistence between fishery and nature is still alive. Thus, for the fishery side, it would be important to clarify what we can change and we cannot change. To reveal this, we need more data about fish and fishery.
Topic of shark can be the one of the good sample to think about this global situation. Sharks are generally characterized by the long life and low productivity which indicates they are weak for fishing pressures. In addition, data of shark is generally rather limited in both coastal and offshore areas, but some of information suggesting that fishing pressure on sharks is increasing recently. Thus, the preparation of data and information about shark is necessary to attain sound management of shark stocks, and also this could be one of the best ways to protect your fishery from the pressures by the recent world movements of the environmental protection.
Sharks
Conservation of sharks has attracted an intense interest from environmental protection groups in the world.
This is supposed to be, at least partially, because sharks are familiar with the public through animations and movies in particular countries and popular support for their conservation activity is easy to be obtained. In addition, many pelagic sharks are viviparity, and this biological character also appeals to the sympathy of the mass. These facts suggest that the managements and conservation of sharks attract more attentions of people conscious of environments. This should be supported by the fact that many shark species were proposed to be on the list of the appendices in the last CITES meeting. Thus, it is necessary for fishing country to collect the
reliable fishery data which can be the base to counter this kind of publicities by indicating the difference between the fact and just one aspect of the fishery.
Shark research activity in Japan
Japan had started the shark research since 1992 in response to the growing interest to pelagic sharks caught as bycatch in the high seas. At the same time, Japan made a positive approach to FAO to organized experts to consult on an International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks (IPOA-Sharks), and also Japan created National Plan of Action for the conservation and Management of Sharks (NPOA- Sharks) of Japan. Japan has been updated its NPOA-Sharks in every two years since 1999.
There are many difficulties in shark research including the many species regularly caught by tuna fisheries and low interests by fishers compared to main target species such as tuna and swordfish. At first, the correct classification of sharks is primal step for data collection. However, there are many “look-alike” species (e.g.
hammerhead shark and thresher shark) and many local names for a single species depending on the locality (e.g. yoshikiri-zame or aota for blue shark in Japan).
Second, the rough classification of sharks in the market prohibits the researcher to collect the species-specific catch data from the wholesale fish market. In some markets, the shark meat and shark fin are landed separately and this tends to cause duplicative count for catch number.
Finally, the low value and interest by fishers often make the data of sharks incomplete and imprecise. For example, the fishers do not record the (precise) number of shark hooked, especially when they discard. It is excessive work for fishers to record the number of shark by species because sharks are not their target species.
Dealing with these problems, National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries (NRIFSF) made the leaflets and posters to enlighten and propagate fishermen and fishery related peoples to record precise shark data.
These can help fisher to classify their catch and to record species-specific catch data. Furthermore, NRIFSF has continued to collect precise biological data from research and training vessels which operate tuna longline fishery, since 1992. Using biological samples from this program, variety of biological information of pelagic sharks such as the life history, sex specific migration pattern, and reproductive biology have been revealed, and they are utilized in the discussion in many RFMOs.
Future direction
For the sustainment and growth of the shark related fishery and fishers livelihood, we encourage the manager and fishers in the fishing country to keep the following points in mind.
1) Construction of cooperation system among countries
Because the demand for the sustainable fishery through the sound stock management becomes largest in recent years, one of the best ways to protect fish stock and fishery is to conduct good stock managements developed based on the scientific information with high quality (e.g. the result of stock analysis such as the trend of standardized CPUE). At the same time, when the multiple sources of scientific data exist, the quality of the total information for the stock is usually limited by the worst data series.
Distribution area of sharks usually extends over the coastal area of multiple countries as well as open sea area.
Thus, it would be better to adjust the quality of data among all countries which catch each shark stock. In this context, the unification of names for the same species and the construction of common data format would be important.
2) Training young scientists
It is imperative that the scientists who work on fishery should be increased and trained. The fishers usually have ”best” knowledge and information about the real situation of the fish stocks, because they are thinking about fish throughout year, and collecting information directly from their operations. Therefore, it is necessary to have close communication and exchange the information with fishers to collect good quality of data and to conduct the rational stock assessment and the effective management.
Fishery scientists should not produce the results of stock analysis which is very different from what fishermen feeling about stock (though sometimes fishers do not say what they really think about the stock which they are
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exploiting). To attain this, NRIFSF adapts the strategy that single scientist conducts both collection of fishery data and analysis of it. This system is also good for a fishery scientist to have the senses of responsibility to protect the fishery studying on.
3) Having the sense of the fishery scientist of the fishing country
It should be clearly recognized that the work of the fishery scientist is generally unrewarded. For example, while the scientists on biology focuses on working with his biological samples, fishery scientist need to work on several occasions, communicating with fishers, attending to variety of meeting, and conducting error check of fishery data etc. So, the number of scientific publication of the scientists on biology can be larger than that of the fishery scientist, and in many case, the evaluation of scientists is decided by the number of scientific publication producing. This would be also the case for the scientists on mathematic, as they can conduct their study with simulation data. As a result of this, many young scientists do not want to work on fishery, but to work on biology or modeling study using simulation data.
This had been a problem even in NRIFSF. The important thing is to develop the system to support the work of fishery scientists, because they are the scientists directly working for the supporting fishery and the protection of fish stock. Without the energetic activity of fishery scientists, the value of the work of scientists on biology and mathematic would be diminished greatly.
Another important thing for the fishery scientists is that they tend to receive large pressure from both fishery managers and stakeholders. Management of fishery and fish stock is usually rather tough work because this largely affects on the stakeholders of fishery as well as the environment protection groups. Thus, cultivations of the spirits of service, sense of justice are believed to be important for fishery scientists.
Lastly, self-confidence is also important for fishery scientists. Without good quality of data, any kinds of sophisticated model cannot produce good information about stock status. But if one can collect data of good quality, it would not be so difficult to produce reliable information about stock. The truth can only be found in the Sea, not in the computer.
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Annex 25