Capture or Wild Fisheries
“Fishing” is the capture and removal of fish and other animals such as clams, oysters, crabs, lobsters, and squid from the natural environment. It can be considered a form of hunting of wild animals in an aquatic environment, and is sometimes also referred to as “wild fisheries.” The sustainability of capture fisheries depends upon healthy and productive ecosystems and sound management. Healthy ecosystems also provide other “ecosystem services,” such as mitigating impacts from storms and sea-level rise, reducing floods, and providing other services of global economic importance, such as tourism.
Fisheries productivity is a key component of food security at both local and global scales. Appropriate and sustainable reform of the capture fisheries sector is an urgent global issue.
A fishery depends on harvests of natural populations, and there are limits to the yields that can be sustainably produced. Yields vary from place to place according to the natural productivity and health of aquatic systems. Yields may also vary seasonally and annually as natural conditions change. Depending on post-harvest handling practices, what is utilized versus what is caught can vary. According to some estimates, loss in yields from poor handling can be as high as 30 percent.
Wild fisheries have always played an important role in local food security, livelihoods, and economies, and are now increasingly important in national, regional, and international trade. At the same time, increases in the global population, especially along coasts, and improvements in harvest technology have increased humans’ capability to exceed the maximum sustained yields from these systems. Global climate change is an additional stressor; its real and potential effects are not fully understood. The majority of fisheries resources are “open access” (i.e., where anyone can invest and capitalize on their exploitation), and this is a major reason for much of the overfishing that is presently of growing global concern.
In most countries, fisheries production from wild harvests has leveled off or even declined. The reasons include overfishing, poor management, the open access nature of the resource, loss of critical habitats and species, removal of juveniles, and the use of destructive fishing techniques such as bomb fishing and poisons. Ecosystem integrity and productivity has also been compromised by removal of key species in the food chain, pollution from poor land use practices, and the poor quality and quantity of water flowing into wetlands and estuaries.
In essence, fisheries governance has not kept pace with fishing technologies, nor the increasing numbers of fishers attracted to these open resources or “common property” goods. A key message of this guide is that it is possible to reverse the decline of capture fisheries — both single-species and multi-species fisheries. There are an increasing number of examples where local fisheries are being managed wisely and sustainably.
The example in the box above, along with others, shows it is possible to improve fisheries productivity, ecosystem health, and ensure more sustainable and profitable livelihoods for the millions of people dependent on fishing. The key is having sound governance structures, proper economic incentives, secure tenure, and access rights.
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