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Worries Grow About Decline in Asia's Fish Stocks

In the southern Philippines fishing town of Sindangan a certain scene is becoming more common across Asia, with soaring fish prices and falling wild fish catches.

A fisherman says more fishing boats are depleting¹ the region’s once-healthy fish stocks. Across the South China Sea, near-shore fish catches have declined since the 1980s, pushing fishermen to go offshore² with bigger boats.

Struggling fishermen

As the catches fall, United Nations fisheries official Benjamin Francisco said fishermen desperately³ search for tactics to boost their haul.

“Some of them have degrees of destructive impact - the use of fine mesh⁴ net, the use of dynamite⁵ explosives for fishing - and other fishing gear… that catches juveniles⁶ or those that harvest maturing spawning⁷ stocks," said Francisco.

Such tactics degrade some species’ ability to regenerate⁸. To tackle the problem, Francisco has been promoting a licensing⁹ system to regulate the number of boats on the water.

Asia’s fishing fleets remain the world’s largest, accounting¹⁰ for nearly three million of the world’s four million fishing vessels¹¹. And by most accounts those numbers are increasing.

Stringent¹² measures

In Hong Kong, there are even more ambitious efforts aimed at regulating fleets, banning trawling near the shore and spending more than $200 million to boost catches by small fishermen. So Ping-man of the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department is optimistic about their impact.

“…The catch value per unit effort will increase, almost doubling in 25 years time,” he said.

Hong Kong’s measures are costly¹³ and out of reach for other countries in Asia.

"The issues are deeply rooted in poverty, the inability of local government to respond immediately, insufficiency of funds," said Francisco.

Sindangan town's fish warden¹⁴, Julie Buot, said most of the fishermen here use fine mesh nets - gear that has been banned for years because it catches very young fish.

Depleting stocks

Wilfredo Ortega feeds a family of nine children from small-scale fishing. As monsoon¹⁵ winds begin to hammer the seas, a last-ditch fishing excursion, earlier in the day, resulted in a catch worth only half a dollar.

"In these months, it’s quite tight [difficult]. We can only save [money] during the months of November, December, January. We can save by catching¹⁶ young sardines¹⁷," said Ortega.

The young sardines may sustain Ortega’s family now, but the catches today mean fewer mature fish tomorrow - and an even riskier¹⁸ future for those who depend on fishing as a last resort.