In the constant battle against Illegal,
Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing
in the country, numbers alone do not tell the whole story. According to the
United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Fish Right
Project, the human element has to be considered too, for any positive impact to
take place in just one site.
For the longest time, regulators and enforcers
have measured their efforts based on the number of violators apprehended, the
number of required patrol boats, equipment, training, and other resources they
need.
However, according to Rollan Geronimo, Fish
Right’s IUU Fishing Specialist through the Marine Environment and Resources
Foundation, Inc., “Understanding IUU fishing requires recognizing a complex
interplay of factors that include looking at the perspectives of fishers and
their motivations, moving towards incentivizing the act of going legal, and
overcoming the task of quantifying its prevalence.”
Early
this year, Geronimo, together with his colleagues Atty. Wilmon Peñalosa and
Jomel Babao, have initiated a new way of measuring IUU fishing in the
Calamianes Group of Islands in Palawan. Ideal for its vast marine waters and
rich marine biodiversity, the area is also a longtime site of several research
efforts by local and international groups. Its municipalities are also highly
dependent on fisheries resources, making it a hotspot for IUU fishing
activities.
Through ongoing workshops with the local
government units, the team applies strategies that focus on compliance and
behavior change, gaining insights from the socio-economic factors that drive
illegal fishing.
“By putting IUU in a more human perspective,
we point out that these practices are done by choice, and incentivizing legal
practices can help instill positive changes in their behavior, and make them
see how going legal benefits their communities,” Peñalosa explained.
In
Busuanga municipality, one strategy is to engage former illegal fishers in Bantay Dagat activities, patrolling the
coastal waters with incentives from the LGUs. Some are also engaged in tourism
activities, which would be very lucrative once the area opens up again to
tourists, since Busuanga is second to Coron in tourism.
Apart from understanding the drivers and
motivations of illegal fishing activities, Fish Right also stresses the need to
develop a nationwide index to understand the entire IUU fishing scenario.
Geronimo and Peñalosa
have spearheaded a quantification process that involves obtaining estimations
from the four LGUs in Calamianes Island Group. Methods included mapping the
frequency of IUU fishing activities, detecting violation hotspots across the
municipalities and their waters, monitoring the presence of boats, and
identifying the profiles of violators and the kind of gear they used during
their activities.
Based on multi-stakeholder assessments,
illegal fishing in the Calamianes Group of Islands’ combined municipal waters
yields an estimated 1,158 metric tons per year, valued over Php 57 million.
Almost 70 percent of this is caught by ‘outsiders’ or non-residents of the four
LGUs, and this highlights the need for greater support to fully curtail IUU
fishing in their waters. Meanwhile, 30 percent of the illegal fishing yields
are from locals who are well within reach of authorities, so multiple
interventions can be done to help them cross-over towards legal, reported, and
regulated fishing.
Fish Right aims to replicate the method to
other coastal municipalities and has recently conducted a Delphi Estimation
workshop involving multiple discussions with on-ground fisheries experts,
fisheries bureau officials, and maritime enforcers to come up with a
comprehensive IUU Index.
“We need this ‘thermometer’ to help us gauge
how well we are doing in deterring, preventing, and eliminating IUU fishing
nationwide,” said Nygiel Armada, Chief of Party of the Fish Right Project. “All
these efforts will work towards rallying for more support from the government
and even the private sector, and simultaneously managing resources and protecting
the environment.”
Geronimo said that the Bureau of Fisheries and
Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has expressed its support to this initiative. Along
with Fish Right, the agency targets to roll out the IUU Fishing Index in 2021. (PR)
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