Small is beautiful? A database approach for global assessment of small-scale fisheries: Preliminary results and hypotheses

Many aspects of small-scale Fisheries hinder our efforts to understand their dynamics, as required for sustainable management. For example, there is no widely accepted definition of small-scale Fisheries or global data on number of small-scale fishers and their catches. One reason for this is that most research on small-scale Fisheries is done at community level and tends to focus on immediate problems, such as poverty reduction, maintaining traditional lifestyle, and conflict resolution with large-scale fisheries. Many national Fisheries development plans claim, and in some cases do, favor the small-scale fisheries sector, though it is generally the larger scale fleets which benefit from such plans. Several studies suggest, moreover, that a "large" small-scale fisheries sector can be as detrimental to fisheries resources and marine ecosystems as large-scale fisheries. Undoubtedly, quantifying the impacts of the small-scale fisheries sector relative to that of the large-scale sector would help improve our ability to manage the Fisheries. In this paper, we present global estimates of small-scale fisheries based on aggregation of available data on catch and number of fishers from national level statistics. The initial data were from FAO country profiles, which were used to interpolate for countries with missing data. We conclude with discussion about how to improve these estimates using field data from regional and national sources.