KARACHI: All of Pakistan’s marine fisheries are fully to over-exploited and the prospects for an economically vibrant and growing fishery are very poor; reduced exports, reduced value, and reduced food fish production are all to be expected even as fish meal production increases.

These findings are part of a recent comprehensive scientific report on the status and prospects of Pakistan’s marine fisheries resources, it emerged on Monday.

The document based on more than six years of research effort blames the grim state of the marine fisheries resources in Pakistan mainly on the unrestricted and unregulated growth in the national fishing fleet.

The report is prepared under the Fisheries Resources Appraisal in Pakistan (FRAP) project, which was initiated through a Unilateral Trust Fund project of the Food and Agriculture of the UN and the government of Pakistan in 2008 and concluded last year.

Under the project, a number of activities and surveys were conducted that included five offshore surveys, a frame survey, a year-long survey in the 14 creeks of the Indus delta, a fishing vessel census and a stakeholder-oriented stock assessment.

According to the results of 14 stock assessments, the overall status for all the major fish stocks of Pakistan is that they are all below target biomass levels and nine of the species groups are below the depleted threshold. Only two species groups out of 14 show any indication that fishing mortality is at or below the limit.

“The conclusion is that all of Pakistan’s marine fisheries are fully to over-exploited and very large economic losses and ecosystem impacts are incurred.

“Control of fishing effort to first stop the increase and begin a process of significant reductions in fishing effort will be required to have any expectation of sustaining the most valuable of the marine resources,” it says.

According to the report, apparently the most positive group is the groupers (family Serranidae) which although overfished continues to remain near the target biomass. But, at the same time, it regards the analysis “somewhat misleading as the analysis of species groups hides the fact that many large and valuable species of groupers have essentially disappeared and been replaced by smaller and faster growing relatives”.

The report points out that the northern Arabian Sea and the Pakistan continental shelf is a productive ecosystem and there will continue to be a substantial volume of fish produced even with no control or reduction of fishing effort.

“What is also sure is that it will be made of ever greater fractions of low valued and fast growing fish suitable for fish meal production and little else.”

Trash fish

According to the report, one of the major reasons the total catch in Pakistan remains high is the existence of the ‘trash’ fishery to feed the demand for fish meal.

“A primary source for fish meal production globally are the small pelagic species such as herrings, anchovies and scads. In Pakistan this is augmented with ‘trash’ landed from trawlers. This indiscriminate catch of small fish is made up of some small pelagics, suitable for fish meal production, but much of it is from catches of juveniles of valuable demersal market species.”

Another component of trash going to fish meal, the report says, is fish of marketable sizes, spoiled due to inadequate post-harvest care and hygiene.

This wasteful acceptance of bad practices further diminishes the value of the fishery.

“Between the losses of market fish and the catches of undersized fish the bioeconomic loss for high valued demersal species is up to 80pc of the potential return had they been allowed to grow to market size before capture and then been properly conserved.

“The demand for fish meal in the livestock sector is large and it is an important supplement for food production. Fish meal from suitable raw material (small pelagics, processing sector wastes and potentially mesopelagics) should be produced. However, the present supplies of raw material are unsustainable, economically damaging and ecologically destructive,” it says.

The only under-exploited resources identified in the FRAP project analyses of Pakistan’s marine fisheries are the mesopelagic stocks off of the continental shelf. The vast majority of the biomass is a single species, Benthosema pterotum, which is a small fish up to nine centimetres long and weighing only a few grams.

It is, however, incredibly numerous with estimates of biomass ranging from 2.5 million to seven million tonnes in Pakistan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

“The stock extends through the northern Arabian Sea in Iran and Oman waters as well. If suitable harvesting and processing techniques can be established, it would be capable of sustaining up to one million tonnes of catch per year in Pakistan alone and be used to produce both fish meal and fish oil,” the report says.

It also suggests to revise the deep sea fishing policy, which, it says, should address the distribution of fishing effort and access rules between federally- and provincially-managed waters by the national vessels but should limit or exclude provision for access by foreign vessels.

Damaging fleet size

On the fleet size, the report says that in addition to more numerous than the last time assessments were made (in the 1980s), the vessels in the fleet today are larger, motorized and utilize mechanized gear and technology that was not available then.

In the 1980s, it was estimated that the fleet comprised 6,500 vessels and it is now over 11,500. In the 1980s it was judged that 550 shrimp trawlers would be sufficient to economically harvest the shrimp at a maximum sustainable yield level. Today, there are over 2,400 trawlers, most have switched from shrimp to ‘trash’ fishing as a result of the depleted stocks, and more are still being built.

“It is recommended that policy and regulatory steps be taken to reduce the fleet size overall to less than 6,000 vessels and the trawler fleet should be specifically limited to less than 600 out of the total.

“This cannot be done in the short term but a consistent policy of fishing effort control through vessel replacement and reduction policy and programmes should target such reductions over a 10-year period,” it concludes.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2016