FAO-UNEP here to lead review of marine fishery environment project

Officials of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO-UN) are in the country leading a review on the status of the FAO/UNEP project on the reduction of environment impact from tropical shrimp trawling conducted in 12 countries worldwide.

The project involves the introduction of by-catch reduction technologies and change in fishing management to minimize the catching of non-target fishes such as turtles, dolphins and juveniles or young fishes.

Twelve tropical countries including the Philippines are participating in the assessment of the fishery marine environment project. Asia is represented by Indonesia and the Philippines, Western Africa by Nigeria and the Cameron, the Gulf Region by Iran and Bahrain and Latin America and the Caribbean by Colombia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.

Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Director Malcolm I. Sarmiento Jr. said in his message during the opening program at the Dusit Hotel in Makati City that the capture of juveniles is a threat to a sustainable fish production.

"Extensive removal or capture of non-target fish is a threat to the biodiversity in a fishing area. Given, that trawling is a major fishery and will likely remain an important sector, it is important that methods or devices to make this fishing gear selective must be introduced to reduce the incidence of catching juveniles and non-target fishes," Sarmiento stressed.

Thomas Mothpoulsen, Fishery Industry Officer of FAO-UN Rome, suggested that the major activities of the participating countries is to develop and/or adapt by-catch reduction technologies which reduce the capture of juvenile fish, non-target fish and non-fish species as well as the development of a legal framework and mechanisms for monitoring, control and enforcement of any new regulations that may be adopted by the program.

He revealed that Mexico had developed a trawl fishing gear that has showed preliminary promising results on by-catch reduction and reduced fuel consumption in the Latin American fishing fleet.

In the Philippines, experiments have been conducted since 2003 up to late 2005 on various by-catch reduction technologies such as the rigid sorting grids, square mesh window, and semi curved window. Sarmiento said that demonstrations of these by-catch technologies were conducted in Manila Bay, Lingayen Gulf, San Miguel Bay, Visayan Sea and Samar Sea.

With the assistance of SEAFDEC Training Department, designs of the Juvenile and Trashfish Excluder Devices or JTED were successfully introduced to fishing boat operators.

This year, the BFAR director said that a memorandum of understanding had been signed by the agency with the City Government of Calbayog headed by Mayor Senen Sarmiento and the Office of Congressman Reynaldo Uy of Samar to implement limitations on the number of fishing boats and utilization of selective juvenile and trash fish excluder devices.

Preliminary results revealed that the device contributes immensely to the reduction of by-catch by 40 to 70 percent of the total catch per operation, Sarmiento said.