Bottom Gillnet

Beaver Street Fisheries and CeDePesca have signed an agreement to design a FIP with the ultimate goal of achieving an MSC certifiable status for the Croaker trawl and bottom gillnet fishery that takes place in southern Brazil.

Croaker (Umbrina canosai) is a demersal species distributed between Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Rio Colorado (Argentina), exploited mainly on the continental shelf of southern Brazil, and has great economic importance.

According to a stock assessment conducted in 2006, the croaker stock was overexploited at the time. In addition, the MSC pre-assessment completed by CeDePesca in November 2021 showed that the fishery-specific management system is not enough to rebuild the stock nor to ensure that it fluctuates around a level consistent with its Maximum Sustainable Yield. Furthermore, at the start of this FIP, the harvest strategy is not well structured, there is no harvest control rule, and there has been no continuous fishery statistics program since 2008. This FIP will aim at improving fishery practices and policies in Brazil so that stocks can be rebuilt to their optimal level.

In Brazil, fisheries are managed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food (MAPA), through the Secretariat of Aquaculture and Fisheries (SAP). However, the Permanent Committee for the Management and Sustainable Use of Southeastern and Southern Demersal Resources (CPG), which had the objective of providing advice for the sustainable exploitation of demersal resources –including croaker– was suspended in 2019. Recently, in April 2022, the SAP/MAPA published a list of the institutions that would compose the CPG. This FIP will aim at achieving the actual reinstatement of the CPG for Southeastern and Southern Demersal Resources and to ensure it meets in a regular fashion to address serious issues in the fishery.

In general, this FIP aims to address all the sustainability hurdles that were identified through the MSC pre-assessment, and Beaver Street Fisheries and CeDePesca are keen to join efforts with other stakeholders in the supply chain to achieve a certifiable status for fisheries.

The FIP is targetting blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus) from the Palk Bay region of the Tamil Nadu coast in India.

The fishing gear is gill net (nandu valai). Each “nandu valai” is about 1000 m long with 40-50 joints and 80-100cm in height and weighs about 55 Kg. The netting is made of high-density nylon mono-filament with a stretched mesh of 90-110 mm. The head rope is nylon with a 1.5 cm in thickness and small floats are attached at intervals of about one and a half feet or marked by a flag and the footrope is with small sinkers. Each weighs about 20g and in one complete stretch of the net, a total of 350 numbers of sinkers are there weighing about 7kg in total weight (BSC FMP). The crew on each fishing boat deploying gillnets at sea, tie several nets (also called gillnet joints) end to end forming a long chain so that they cover a considerable area at sea (e.g. Devipattinam - 12 nets x 70 meters used in OBBSGN). 

The crafts involved in the fishery are classified as Outboard bottom set gillnets (OBBSGN), Nonmechanised bottom set gillnets (NMBSGN), Inboard bottom set gillnets (IBBSGN) and Outboard gillnets (OBGN) (Srinath et al., 2005). The crafts employed for gillnet operation include catamarans, plank-built boats, dugout canoes, and fiberglass coated plywood boats. Motorization of the gillnet crafts, by fitting inboard or outboard engines is also reported, and in recent years’ fiberglass boats with an overall length range of 6-10 m are more commonly used for deploying fishing gears. 

The Blue Swimming Crab (BSC) gillnet fishers in Palk Bay operate under an open-access regime that is based on a top-down management approach with several applicable laws at Federal, State & District levels. Gillnets locally called “Nandu valai” primarily target Portunus pelagicus which comprises more than 98% of the crab landings (CMFRI 2018) with the remaining 2% comprised of Portunus sanguinolentus and Charybdis natator species. BSC fishery in Palk Bay is managed by Tamil Nadu State Fisheries Department (DoF) which issues licenses for fishing boats and applies several management measures (3 days: 4 days Rule for mechanized boats, a token system for trawlers, etc.) to mitigate conflicts between various actors (fishing boats and trawlers). A good account of the management history, fishing practices, historical fishing levels, and other resource attributes in Palk Bay is provided in Stephen et al, (2013); Salagrama (2014); and CMFRI (2018) reports.  
 

Note: This FIP went inactive on April 2, 2019.

The National Sole Fishery Co-Management Committee (NASCOM), The Department of Fisheries of the Ministry of Fisheries, Water Resources and National Assembly Matters of The Gambia and the Atlantic Seafood Company Ltd. are committed partners to this FIP.  NASCOM has been delegated management responsibility and exclusive use rights to the sole fishery and associated marine catfish fishery in the artisanal zone (out to 9 nautical miles along the Atlantic coast) in a gazetted Sole Fishery Co-Management Plan. NASCOM is coordinating this FIP.

The Surat Thani blue swimming crab fishery is an important export product for Thailand with an export value of $60-80 million USD. The unit of assessment is located in the Gulf of Thailand Gulf of Thailand (between 6° and 13.5° North and 99° and 104.5° East). There are a number of critical issues facing this fishery, including the overexploitation of populations in heavily fished inshore areas, harvest of undersized crab and gravid females, lack of management plans or harvest strategies, and lack of enforcement capacity. Through the active involvement of FIP stakeholders - including the Department of Fisheries (DoF), Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR), Thai Frozen Food Association (TFFA), Thai Crab Product Group (TCPG) - and FIP participants, the sustainability challenges facing this fishery are being addressed.