Transcript Diapositiva 1

SESSION I:
Comments on ‘Basic tools,
Indicators, and Best Practices’ in the
Bioeconomic context
John F. Caddy
(Consultant to WWF)
What information is needed to judge the basic health
of a stock?
Sustaining exploitation rates near MSY depends on active management if
a continuously productive resource is to be maintained. Improved fleet
technology, high market demand, and environmental fluctuations
make management very difficult if fleet capacity is already high!
Achieving ‘sustainability’ is far from automatic!
For example, my recent studies have demonstrated that:
a) N. Atlantic landing trends for many species have shown ‘boom and
bust’ characteristics (Caddy and Surette 2006);
b) Restoring depleted fish stocks is painful and costly. Successful
restoration plans so far have been rendered difficult by the harvest
needs of high capacity fleets (Caddy and Agnew 2005)
– i.e., don’t assume that stock depletion resulting from excess capacity is
going to be easily reversible!
The UN Summit’s Plan of Implementation (Article 30)
stated that in order to achieve sustainable fisheries, it is
necessary to set concrete objectives:
viz:
“Maintain or restore stocks to levels that can produce the
maximum sustainable yield with the aim of achieving these
goals for depleted stocks on an urgent basis and where
possible not later than 2015.” (United Nations, 2002).
A global review of stock recovery plans (Caddy and Agnew, 2004),
found 58 cases in which a recovery effort had achieved some success –
mainly in North American waters.
Most recovery efforts have been very recent, and recovery times were
between 4-8 years to 14-22 years – i.e., without a major effort towards
conservation in the following decade, it will be difficult to achieve the
UN objective.
What are the best existing sources of data on stock
abundance and fleet capacity?
A/ Data on stock abundance has been derived in two main ways:
1) indirectly from commercial catches (catch rate, size/age composition)
2) (more reliably?) by fishery surveys from at-sea platforms (e.g. research vessels).
- In either case, data must be collected and analysed by dedicated personnel following statistical
procedures, and must include data from all fleets fishing the same stock, whatever nationality.
B/ A fleet registry is required, containing numbers of actively fishing/licensed vessels, & their
characteristics (tonnage, hold capacity and fishing methodology). For shared stocks and
international resources, the capacity of all fleets fishing the resource should be monitored.
To calibrate the ‘fishing power’ of commercial vessels against the harvest rate, a measure of
fishing mortality is needed (from A/). Typically, such calibrations show that the experience
accumulated by skippers, plus the effects of new technologies, increase the fishing power of a
fleet by some 2-4% annually. The key problem for fishery management then, is how to keep
fleet fishing power in check, since:
C/ For ‘mature’ fisheries, the fleet size often exceeds that needed to harvest the resource – in
order to stay below or at MSY, a system of limited quotas means that vessels spend a
significant part of a season tied up in port in order to avoid overfishing.
D/ Given a steady growth in fishing power, license replacement procedures need to be
rigorously enforced, so that an old vessel of a given fishing power leaving the fleet is replaced
by one of the same or lower fishing power.
A science-based fisheries management system is
information-intensive – it must measure inputs to the
fishery as well as outputs. The classical developed country approach is similar to the following figure:
Advisable and usually achievable criteria for
management?
Criteria for collecting info are only adequate if:
a) A long term management plan with objectives was decided
and discussed with industry;
b) Adequate funds are set aside for monitoring, assessment,
MCS and management;
c) Ideally, a management control rule should be in place which
establishes what actions to take promptly if LRPs are
overshot;
d) Trained personnel are available to collect data, analyse it,
and make management recommendations;
e) The managers are able to understand the advice, and have in
place a suitable regulatory framework and funds to enforce it.
What global data bases on fisheries exist?
The FAO capture database, published in the FAO Yearbook of Fishery
Statistics or its electronic equivalent (See FAO.org), is the most complete
and widely used source on global catch trends, but low in resolution. Its
accuracy depends on the quality (and impartiality!) of national data
reporting to FAO:
- FAO fishing areas are large and may include several stocks; i.e., its
analysis may not be stock-specific;
- Catches of some species are included under the genus or higher
taxonomic category;
- deteriorating economic conditions, social unrest, famine, tsunamis etc,
will result in a corresponding decline in monitoring capabilities;
Despite these points, the FAO biennial evaluation has proved consistent.
But it is debatable whether it is adequate on a stock-by-stock basis for
WTO monitoring purposes, without substantial extra funding.
How many fisheries are currently assessed?
FAO (2006) reported on some 441 stocks for which the state of
exploitation has been estimated, and some others where catch trends
have been analysed.
While this list includes most of the major stocks, many smaller resources
are not regularly assessed; either by countries or fishery commissions.
The situation cannot be too different world-wide – for example, the small
tunas and tuna-like species of tropical areas are not usually assessed by
tuna Commissions, even though these species are taken incidentally by
industrial vessels, and are of key importance to inshore fleets.
Can we use economic data to identify whether subsidies
will be damaging?
In theory, the balance sheet on costs and earnings of boats already
in a fishery could be used to identify overfishing, and the need to
avoid subsidies.
However, low interest loans and their later write-offs are not
uncommon and difficult to identify from the outside.
If earnings are not being set aside for vessel replacement, perhaps
this may diagnose a reliance on subsidies?
Two main management options exist - almost always the
second is chosen:
1/ Harvest at significantly below the MSY level. To To keep spawning biomasses high
and let slow-growing species replace themselves. Ancillary measures (e.g. closures,
MPAs) may be used to protect critical habitats/ life history stages.
The information needs here are much less than for the next option:
2/ Aim for a harvest rate close to, or at MSY.
1) Feed-back from indicators of biomass, spawning potential and annual recruitment is
needed annually to regulate harvest rates.
2) Vessel fishing power may grow 2-4%/year (often undetected), hence fleet capacity
must be controlled by strict vessel replacement rules;
3) A Management Control Rule must be quickly implemented when Limit Reference
Points (LRPs) are infringed;
4) A management plan should set LRP’s; long-term limits for stocks and fleets;
5) The plan should include a stock recovery strategy once LRPs are infringed.
Option 2 is very information intensive!
Are small-scale fisheries exempt from a responsibility
for stock collapses?
The assumption that small scale fisheries do not lead to overexploitation
is not justified by the facts in several parts of the world.
Evidence suggests that uncontrolled small-scale fishing/inappropriate
gear, can result in ecological disasters – e.g. the trap fisheries in some
Caribbean countries; the gill-net fishery in the northern Gulf of
California (supposedly leading to dolphin by-catch and potentially their
extinction), and a variety of inshore fisheries in Asian countries.
(Subsidies to convert to less damaging, small scale methods are needed)
In some coastal communities informal rules dictate local access rights, in
a system of resource sharing. Such rules can be rendered ineffective if
subsidies allow larger vessels to enter, and quota shares based on
‘historical performance’ ignore historical access rights of locals to local
resources – Can subsidies be used to counteract ‘unfair?’ historical
allocations?
What are current trends in the availability of
fishery data?
Technological and ecological changes have made stock assessment
procedures more complex (e.g. adding ecosystem criteria), and less
precise since fishing power changes are costly and difficult to measure.
Often this has has led to neglecting measurement of fleet fishing effort .
Collecting biological data is also manpower intensive and costly if a
dedicated research vessel is required, and current concerns with
‘ecosystem effects’ have added new burdens to research institutes.
We should ask therefore, if we can measure the ability of a fisheries
managers to keep effort in check, without necessarily carrying out an
independent stock assessment?
Is a broader approach to judging the health of a
fishery available?
-The WTO, or other interested bodies, cannot expect to duplicate the fish
stock assessments by national research laboratories. They will have to
develop approaches to monitoring (e.g. questionnaires) which do not
need to specify the exact state of the fishery.
-These should aim at estimating the level of risk current management
approaches are incurring. The evaluation should use readily available
data, and judge it against an acceptable standard (e.g. the FAO Code of
Conduct for Responsible Fisheries).
- The key task is to ensure that national institutions are living up to their
responsibility for safe management of marine resources, and not using
subsidies to ‘hide’ managerial deficiencies!
Taking a higher level perspective based on the Code of
Conduct, a questionnaire approach might be
considered. Results can be displayed using the ‘traffic
light’ approach to evaluate management performance.
Can questionnaires provide reliable indicators
of fishery status?
It will likely be impossible for WTO to obtain formal
assessments for many fisheries. If so, indicators of
precautionary behaviour have to be largely based on the
management measures that apply, and to a lesser extent, on
their effectiveness in terms of fishery outputs. Questionnaires,
such as those based on FAO’s Code of Conduct, provide one
approach to judging compliance with responsible procedures
(Caddy, FISHCODE, FAO, in press).
A tentative example of such a questionnaire is given in the
following slides, that should be completed by independent
authority(ies) – see e.g. MSC for possible procedures?
A questionnaire to establish the state of management and
exploitation of marine resources.
Characteristics of the fishery for resource A over the last
decade
OUTPUTS
1) Landings are still above 50% of the average for the best three
years landings on record (FAO Statistics?) ?
2) Landings (all fleets) have not declined significantly over the last
5 years?
3) Catch rates by standard vessels have not declined significantly
over the last 5 years ?
4) The fleet capacity utilizing the resource has not grown by more
than 10% since the best three years landings on record?
5) Prices for the product on the domestic/international market have
not grown by more than 15% over the last 5 years?
6) Biological data are collected in port, OR by at-sea observers,
OR copies of catch log books are completed and collected by
officials?
7)The capture of protected species is actively discouraged?
8) The integrity/diversity of resources/habitats is being actively
maintained?
9) Illegal or unreported fishing is being kept under strict control?
Yes
Maybe/
partial
No
Green
Yellow
Red
Yes
(Cont’d) Characteristics of the fishery for resource A over the last
decade
INPUTS
10) Research vessel surveys are carried out at regular intervals?
11) There is a limited license system in operation that covers all vessels
fishing the resource?
12) There is a system of licence transfers that ensures that fleet capacity
is not increasing?
13) There is a system of at-sea surveillance of the fleet operation or onboard observers ?
14) Biologists employed to evaluate the fishery have at least Masters in
Science education ?
15) A management plan exists for the fishery?
16) Closed areas or MPAs are in effect, OR areas within the stock range
are still unfished or form refugia??
17) For shared, straddling and highly migratory stocks, there are
agreements or negotiations in course with other users of the resource?
18) The government fisheries agency meets regularly with local
community or fishing industry representatives?
Green
Maybe/
partial
Yellow
No
Red
Such a questionnaire approach will of course require
further elaboration, but:
- The score on such a questionnaire could be the basis for
corrective action by fisheries managers.
- Achieving a minimum scoring (level to be specified)
could be one criterion for judging the risks to the resource
and livelihoods of those already in the fishery of
introducing a subsidy to construct further capacity.
Thank You
Successful fisheries keep costs below revenues, but this possibility
rapidly evaporates as effort rises and catch rates and biomass decline.
Locating the optimal effort level is information-intensive!
Adding subsidies reduces costs (fleet B), but drives the point when
costs = earnings to still lower stock sizes (from point A to point B).
Using subsidies to add capacity/effort is rarely necessary given a
flourishing international market for fish products. However, if there
is a cap on capacity, a subsidy could be considered:
 Following natural disasters affecting inshore fleets (e.g. tsunamis);
 For the same harvest, to convert large capacity units (e.g. large-scale
foreign fishing in the zone) to small-scale domestic units, so as to
enhance employment or provide local food resources,;
 To move to safer harvest methods, or increase ‘add-on’ local value
by improving methods;
To retrain fishers to enter other sectors of the economy;
To encourage fishers/fleet to move to less heavily fished resources;
To finance fleet buy-backs to eliminate over-capacity;
To compensate for loss of local fishing rights in setting up a MPA;
 To restore coastal habitats of importance to fisheries damaged by
natural disasters or anthropogenic impacts;
 To set up mechanisms of international cooperation on shared
resources
Is there a distinction between subsidies for construction
and subsidies for supplementing running costs?
 Legitimate national aspirations may lead to construction of a fleet to harvest resources
in its zone, even if these resources are shared, straddling, or highly migratory stocks
fished elsewhere in the species range.
There is a significant risk of course, that combined with existing (foreign?) effort, the
new capacity will lead to stock declines and economic hardship for the owners of the new
fleet.
If this leads to the call for subsidies to reduce running costs, concern should be raised
by other users that such subsidies are affecting fair competition with others sharing the
same resource.
If this perspective is commonly shared, there seems a motive for distinguishing between
subsidies for construction, and those used to run fleet operations. While the first may be
seen as legitimate, the second may not.
Incidentally, subsidies to aid fleet replacement raise another question – if operations to
date did not allow returns adequate to replace vessels, could these subsidies be seens as
aiding running costs rather than just construction?
To what extent do answers to the above questions differ for
‘small-scale artisanal fisheries’?
Perhaps the key factors that have made the small scale sector a potential means of
overexploiting, and even depleted stocks, are at least fourfold:
1) Improved technologies (fish finders, engines, monofilament gear) or inappropriate
gear (gill nets, and in some cases fish traps that take important herbivorous fish that
keep coral reefs free of algae);
2) A changeover from local marketing with inadequate fish storage methods (i.e.
surpluses to day-to-day needs were unmarketable), to systems using ice and onshore
freezers for marketing ‘offshore’;
3) The use of the small-scale sector, deliberately or by default, as an employment of last
resort. This makes putting a cap on small scale capacity socially impractical;
4) The inability of many countries, for budgetary and manpower reasons, to monitor
activities of the small scale sector or assess their fisheries.
A subsidy programme is defensible where small scale fleets have been destroyed by
natural disasters, but should not be an occasion for increasing fleet fishing power.
AXIOM: A ‘boom and bust’ subsidy programme where excess fleet development is
followed by an emergency programme to counter the effects of overexploitation on local
livelihoods, is not a rational strategy!
Can we rely on regional fishery management organizations
(RFMOs) to provide reliable data on stock status?
Some reasons why the work of RFMOs is frequently hampered are given
in FAO 2001), namely:
1) Conservation measures may be undermined by fishing of non-parties,
illegal fishing and reflagged vessels;
2) Failure of members to provide adequate information on their fisheries;
3) Political pressures related to sovereignty and national interests;
4) Poor MCS capability;
5) Poor links between science and implementation;
6) Lack of financial support;
How precautionary should criteria be? - Very!
(but using ‘precaution’ is not a substitute for data gathering!)
Precautionary criteria are needed given inadequate data and our poor
understanding of marine ecology, and our limited ability to measure the
impacts of fishing.
Ecosystem management’ is supposed to be precautionary, and some
governments are now starting to apply ‘ecosystem principles’ in fisheries
management. - however, our practical experience in ecosystem
management in the sea is very limited.
The only precautionary measure we can be fairly sure will be effective
for conservation is one that limits or reduces fishing effort!
Monitoring fisheries nowadays looks at a broader range
of indicators, including ecosystem factors, environment,
and economic performance.
ADD Fig 5. from Caddy (1999) showing key factors (inside the rectangle) affecting fisheries production, and some
important ‘extrinsics’ outside, that could be monitored by indicators.
Conventional assessment-based management is expensive!
Conventional single-species assessments off developed countries are
often based on surveys, or commercial catches may be sampled for more
detailed data, or secondary indicator deduced from analysis, such as:
- Population biomass, and biomass/numbers of spawners (mature fish).
- Age or size structure of the population and mean sizes.
- Age or size at maturity.
- Indices of recruitment or year class strength.
- Condition factor and growth rate.
- Egg or larval surveys.
- Length-weight relationship or information on the condition factor.
- Abundance of main prey items
-The reproductive potential of the adult population or its population
fecundity.
-Substantial expenditures are involved in this process!
Can the potential effectiveness of management
be estimated from budgetary expenditures?
In general, qualitative or semi-quantitative indicators using the
questionnaire approach may be feasible (e.g. Caddy 1999b; 2000). This
should could measure inputs to the management process, such as costs of
facilities (capital value and annual upkeep), personnel (numbers and
salaries), and expenditures on necessary activities.
The total cost of management in toto, should be a small proportion of the
landed value of the product, but can rent be extracted from the fishery to
pay for this?
Monitoring the outputs from the management process (e.g., indicators of
the successful application of inputs in terms of healthy populations), is
perhaps even more important than inputs since it measures the rate of
success, but requires a more intensive sampling approach.
Does adding an ecosystem dimension help?
The recent scrambling to add an ecosystem dimension to the techniques
of assessment currently used has not yet provided a simple practical and
cost-effective replacement for ‘single species assessment’.
Given that doubts on some conventional assessment procedures are
becoming common in the scientific literature, we should not be
embarrassed to use qualitative approaches, or (in moderation) employ the
precautionary approach (e.g., FAO 1995b; Anon 1997).
We should consider empirical methods of judging the risk to a resource
due to the management approach currently applied, as a possible basis
for judging the applicability of subsidies.
Above all, we could use more diverse, indicators than in classical
assessment approaches and aim for the simpler objective of warning of
ecological unsustainability or risk of collapse, as opposed to attempting
to assess the current demography of the fished population.
Data on capacity
What is urgently needed in addition to catch data is a regularly updated
national fleet registry, with details on licenses to fish, vessel
characteristics and fishing gear in operation
AND evidence that fishing license replacement is on the basis that the
new vessel is no more powerful (and perhaps less so) than the one it
replaces! If the resource is approaching full exploitation and fleet
subsidies exist, this control mechanism on Capacity emerges as more
important than ever!
Readily available empirical information may not be useful for stock
assessment, but may provide an indication of changing levels of risk to
the population.
The recent development of empirical approaches for following fisheries developments
seems to arise from the following perceptions:
A shortage of comprehensive data prevents full stock assessment procedures being
applied to many species, and this shortage is likely to persist into the foreseeable
future.
2) A wider range of qualitative indicators may be available, that while these might not
directly measure biomass or mortality rates, might help signal changes in the risk to
resources and environments.
3) The general acceptance of a ‘limit reference approach’ encourages judgements as to
the point in any indicator series when an unacceptable risk of stock collapse exists.
4)Simultaneously displaying a large number of indicators in a ‘traffic light approach’
(Caddy 1999; Halliday et al. 2001), or a PS(I)R approach (Malkina-Pykh, 2000),
facilitates visual identification of ecosystem change in a way that should precede
specific investigation or modelling.
What information is needed to judge the
appropriate level of capacity of a fleet?
There are several definitions of capacity in current use: where
biological impacts are concerned, the capacity measure should
reflect the number of standard days fished, or the death rate of
stock due to fishing (F), so that a management measure can be
linked to a fish stock assessment or the state of a resource.
A measure of fishing capacity (such as fleet tonnage or engine
horsepower, days fished, or investment in fleets and plant),
measures an ‘input’ to the fishery, and will have to be related
to some ‘outputs’ from the fishery in order to determine its
biological impact.
What might be considered ‘minimally acceptable
levels of information?’
-For proper assessments, there is a need to monitor inputs to the fishery
(effort, capacity, fuel, technology = fishing power, investments) and a
range of outputs from the fishery (including: catches, catch rates,
remaining biomass, species composition, spawning potential, annual
recruitment, bycatch and discards, mortality exerted by fishing).
-Adequate monitoring of BOTH inputs and outputs in a balanced fashion
seems a prerequisite for a managed fishery, and is provided for in the
Code of Conduct. Questionnaires based on the Code are now available
(Caddy, in press).
- To monitor risk, simpler but broader indicators may be used, such as a
decline in mean size, the proportion of mature fish; biodiversity; a rise in
market prices, or increasing impacts of fishing on associated species such
as marine mammals.
The high costs of monitoring and assessment
Shortage of funding for data collectors in ports or at landing places, and
for analysis of fisheries samples thus present problems.
Adequate numbers of trained personnel in methods of population
analysis, and budgets/equipment to allow them to work, are rarely
available in developing countries.
This makes annually-repeated stock assessments infrequent in most
developing countries.
However, some means of directly measuring the impact of different
levels of fleet capacity is a priority before MSY conditions are
approached.
A possible procedure which places the burden of doubt on the exploiting parties
Although the reality of the situation is that formal annual stock assessments are still
performed for a minority of resources, my opinion is that establishing which stocks are
seriously depleted or 'at risk' could be done fairly simply in a 2-3 stage process, in which
the burden of proof is required from the parties fishing, and would not have to be provided
at the expense of WTO or its associated organizations; as suggested by the following.
A first listing of stocks that may be 'at risk' could even be done by WWF using the
procedures described for analysing data reported to FAO
The second stage would be to post a list of these internationally, and ask for further
information from parties exploiting these resources; not just on their status, but also a list
of vessels by size/fishing power categories which are exploiting these stocks.
The third stage would be to find funding to send experts to make an evaluation.
Since this process is precautionary however, after posting a list of stocks and coastal
states/DWFNs exploiting them, and not receiving a reply from the relevant authorities,
this would be reason enough to consider that there is a problem, even if other evidence is
unavailable. i.e., for a WTO panel to establish that a fishery is at risk begins with a
relatively simple process, which gets more complex and costly if further more refined
assessments are needed. The next step however should be at the expense of the
country(ies) exploiting the stock - if they do not respond adequately to a first appeal based
on broad but imprecise evidence such as a drastic drop in catches and evidence of
excessive demand, rising prices and excessive effort, then the stock is indeed at risk. At
that point, a rough analysis based on some aspect of species vulnerability (such as
biological characteristics stored in FISHBASE and the basic species biology which is
usually known), may establish whether the life history is especially vulnerable.
The aspect emphasized in the text then, is that both input and output data should be available. For
developing countries to satisfy a ‘science-based’ assessment will be difficult, but clearly a
questionnaire could establish what they are doing to ensure that:
Infrastructure for data gathering and assessment exists;
Management, control and surveillance infrastructure and a system of fisheries regulations is in
place which bears in mind scientific principles;
They collect data on effort/capacity operating on the stock and control the fleet capacity by
licensing and vessel replacement criteria;
They collect some biological and catch data;
Ideally, some closed areas protect critical habitats for demersal species;
They attempt some sort of stock assessments – if so for which species; which methods?
They discuss joint management with other parties sharing resources?
If they certify foreign fleets in their zone (or foreign fleets fish the same stock outside of their
zone), have they considered the impact of their catches on their domestic fisheries/food security?
If they are able to answer most of these questions positively, (even if they do not assess the
resource, but do collect data allowing an outside expert to do this for them), the WTO should be
satisfied.