The Mexican government is confronted with critiques that it is unable to prevent the once abundant and now endangered but highly valued Totoaba, a ray-finned fish species (Totoaba macdonaldi) from illegal fishing practices in the upper Gulf of California. Poachers catch Totoaba with illegal gill nets in which an even more endangered species, the Vaquita, a porpoise species (Phocoena sinus) gets entangled as well. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation which investigates law enforcement in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, states that Mexico fails to implement existing regulations.
Small-scale artisanal fisheries are largely underestimated in terms of their catch volumes and contribution to the local economy — and at the same time they are adversely affected by industrial fishing, offshore aquaculture, tourism and other uses of coastal waters. Assessing the value and importance of small-scale fisheries is a crucial step towards countering the threats they face. This also benefits fishes, because if fisheries can minimise the suffering of the animals concerned, small-scale fisheries are more likely to succeed than their industrial competitors, which use heavy fishing gear.
Research has shown that it is impossible for almost all animal species to experience welfare in aquaculture [1]. Should we therefore focus on improving fish welfare in fisheries? It depends.
The fishing gear and methods vary greatly, depending first of all on the intended catch and, secondly, on the target species.
Artisanal fisheries provide 53% of the fish consumed worldwide, 90% of employment in fisheries, predominantly in the Global South, and 54% of all catch sale revenues (see graph below). They could provide even more if they were not harried by industrial fisheries. Instead, artisanal fisheries are disregarded.
Artisanal fisher(wo)men in the Global South complain about the frequent disregard of their human rights and demand that their traditional rights to access to water bodies, fishing grounds, landing and transformation sites, and to the market be recognised.
Fisherwomen in particular complain of discrimination and call for their crucial role in artisanal fisheries, families, and communities to be recognised.
Fishing communities complain of marginalisation and demand access to public infrastructure, social services, and development.
On top of these problems, artisanal fisheries on the shores of seas and lakes are among the first to be affected by global warming and therefore need support to overcome its negative impacts.
This is a short summary of workshops with artisanal fisher(wo)man held during the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture in 2022, made available through a worth seeing video recently by ICSF [1].
And what about the fishes?
The personal summary of one of the ICSF workshop participants is especially interesting:
‚Maybe we have to look where we haven’t looked before, put ourselves in the skin of the fish.‚
Good point! Putting yourself in the skin of a fish — whether as a consumer, chef,retailer, fishmonger or a primary producer — would also mean to recognise also the rights of the fishes to be at least treated with respect and spared harm as much as possible. It is understandable that fishermen who struggle for their own survival do not pay much attention to the struggle of the animals. A key to substantially reducing animal suffering in fisheries is to improve the living conditions of artisanal fisher communities. The still unrivalled project of fair-fish and artisanal fisheries in Senegal in the noughties [2], which failed because the market was not ready yet, is still waiting for imitators.
Title picture: Artisanal fishermen on the Saloum, Senegal (credit: Michael Hauri)
