Sustainable Fisheries

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Worldwide, small-scale coastal fisheries contribute significantly to providing food, employment, and incomes to many very poor people. But these same fisheries, and the ecosystems upon which they rely, are under increasing threat from a combination of climate change, pollution, over-fishing, and the exploitation of resources.


Fisheries management has been a major component in trying to address some of these issues, but with limited global success. The potential of fisheries, if managed well, is considerable but what form that potential will take will depend on how and why fisheries are managed.


This collection of reports and presentations explores just this question, describing some of the challenges faced by small-scale fisheries worldwide and their efforts to address these challenges and improve the health and well-being of the people who are dependent on these threatened environments.


The collection brings together the "grey literature" of the field, valuable work that is not readily available through academic journals and databases but is instead spread across dozens of organizational websites. This set of reports was initially identified as part of a synthesis review of key lessons commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation's Program on Oceans and Fisheries. We are pleased to make it more easily available for others to use and build on and encourage researchers and practitioners to add relevant work to the collection.

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Community-based Data Gathering and Co-management of Marine Resources in Timor-Leste

January 1, 2013

This the final technical report regarding communication products and outputs created as a result of lessons learned from eleven years of the Fisheries Management Science Programme (FMSP). These lessons, together with tools, methods and informative experiences have been brought together into accessible communications products that aim to highlight the FMSP experiences in relation to fisheries co-management and lead the reader towards the more detailed products available. As such the project has not aimed to generate any particular new insights into any aspect of the co-management process but instead to communicate what exists to a range of stakeholders. The project has developed a communication strategy that has identified a range of target communications stakeholders including policy makers, implementing agencies and agencies with a capacity building remit who might benefit from the lessons learned. The communications strategy was developed together with two other projects to ensure a coordinated approach to the promotion of products relating to co-management and a single communications database was established through which the strategy could be implemented. Based on lessons learned in earlier uptake promotions projects, a range of communications products were developed.

Regional Workshop on Co-management in Small-Scale Fisheries: Lessons Learned and Best Practices 12-13 December 2012, Bangkok, Thailand

December 1, 2012

An FAO project, the Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme, which is funded by Spain, has worked with the Timorese authorities and coastal communities to build local capacity and put in place effective methods to gather a variety of important fisheries data. This is used to help make important decisions relating to the management of the nation's fisheries sector. These actions, which are detailed in this publication, have been carried out at relatively little expense and in a participatory manner that has engaged communities while at the same time providing practical skills to all involved.

Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme for South and Southeast Asia (RFLP) Activity 1.5 (2011): Systems and Procedures for Participatory Monitoring of Management Measures Developed, Introduced and Implemented-catch Monitoring

January 1, 2012

Coastal fisheries are very essential for supporting the livelihoods of many rural poor in the coastal areas, particularly coastal community fisheries members. They serve as sources of food, employment and income generation for many coastal families. "Coastal Community Fisheries Catch Monitoring" Project which was conducted from April to November 2011 provides some data which indicates the importance of small-scale fisheries. The project was financially supported by the Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme, Cambodian component (RFLP/CMB) and was activity 1.5 of the approved RFLP CMB 2011 activity work plan and budget. For this catch monitoring study, 26 small-scale subsistence fishers, including 05 women, from five community fisheries (CFi?s) in the RFLP CMB area of geographic coverage from the four coastal provinces of Cambodia were selected and following appropriate training collected specific catch data and recorded it in fisher's logbook on a daily basis for the purpose of getting a better understanding of catch per unit of effort (CEPU), the health of inshore fish stock and the contribution of aquatic products to small-scale fisher households along the coast of Cambodia. The key data items recorded included total catchweight, catch weight by species, total catch sale price, fish price of the main species and total lengths of some key species. The study involved designing logbooks, training the selected 26 fishers as data collectors on data collection methods, collecting data from all the selected fishers, designing a database and entering all the collected data into the database, checking for errors and analyzing the collected data for final reporting and preparing report.

Mainstreaming Gender Into Project Cycle Management in the Fisheries Sector

January 1, 2011

This manual has been prepared to facilitate gender analysis and project planning in fisheries development projects. It is intended to be a toolkit to help project managers and implementing counterparts (such as extensionists, government and non-government field workers, and private- and public-sector development consultants, community organizers and leaders of local groups), to facilitate the integration of gender issues into the project cycle.