Agriculture and Agribusiness

Capture Fisheries Management and Compliance

A fishery is a shared resource that pays whoever catches the fish first, which is why fisheries collapse while everybody involved is behaving rationally. This course covers managing against that. Delegates work through stock assessment in usable terms: catch per unit effort, size composition and the indicators that show a stock is being fished down. Reference points and total allowable catch follow. Management measures are covered across quota, effort limitation, gear restriction, closed seasons and closed areas, with what each achieves and how each is evaded. Rights based approaches and allocation are addressed. Monitoring, control and surveillance follow, including catch documentation, vessel monitoring, observers and port state measures. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is treated directly, since it is the central enforcement problem in the region. Bycatch and gear selectivity are covered. Small scale and artisanal fisheries are addressed with co management approaches. The course closes on value addition, on market access requirements and on the economics of a fishery.