Date: 28-30 January
2013
Venue: Bangkok, Thailand
Objective:
1. Reviewing the problems of fisheries data collection
in coastal small-scale and inland fisheries at national; and
2. Identifying the key issues of fisheries data
collection that should be addressed in order to improve the countries’ efforts
in fisheries data collection; and
3. Sharing the lessons learned from effective ways of
data collection among the SEAFDEC Member Countries.
Background of the Workshop
The Regional Workshop aimed to review and identify the
difficulty of fisheries data collection in coastal small-scale and inland
fisheries as well as find out the effective ways of data collection from
SEAFDEC Member Countries. This
could be achieved by fostering the lessons learned in terms of the
methodologies and exchanging experiences in effective fisheries data
collection. It was also envisaged that such effort could be adapted in the
setting up of fisheries census with a future goal of improving fisheries data
collection.
In
addition, SEAFDEC has fourth stages to support the SEAFDEC Member Countries
during 5 years. The first stage is this Regional Workshop. The
Second stage is the Regional Training course, which will be organized after
this Regional Workshop, on building up the applicable cost effective fisheries
information collection scheme for improvement of monitoring to fisheries
activities on February, 26 to March, 3 at SEAFDEC-Training Department. The
Regional Training course are providing the methodology and knowledge to the
participants, then, they will making the idea for future national activities
for improvement data collection. After the Regional Training course, SEAFDEC
expected that the representatives from SEAFDEC Member Countries in this
Regional Training course will making the National Workshop for improvement of
fisheries information collection and fisheries statistic for sustainable
fisheries management in their own country with supporting by SEAFDEC. The last
state, After the National Workshop, SEAFDEC's staff will collaborate with the
National's staff to providing the on-site training course to facilitate
fisheries information gathering through introduction of community-based
fisheries management. SEAFDEC expected that each SEAFDEC member countries will
making a plan and take an action in the countries.
Conclusion of the Workshop
The SEAFDEC Member Countries presented their current data collection
methods and fisheries information. There are different
types of data and information that should be collected and could be used to
support management for sustainable fisheries, e.g. census, statistics, survey data, research studies, etc. There
are also various tools that could be used to collect data and information such
as logbook, questionnaire, survey forms, RRA, PRA. The planning for data collection
should consider clear objectives on how the data would be used; and what kind
of data is necessary. The data should be able to clarify the fisheries
structure, production, species, resources status, and socio-economic status.
The problems and constraints were divided into technical and non-technical
problems. For example 1) lack of supervision and training on basic data
collection, 2) lack of standardization of fisheries data collection concept, 3)
small-scale fishing gears are highly diverse complexity of ecosystem , 4)
difficult to get participation from fishermen, and high cost and manpower for
data collection. In addition, the countries use top-down (obligation) and
bottom-up (voluntary) for data collection method. The top-down
(obligation) data collection, which may include official statistics survey
form, licensing, registration, documentation, etc. However, the exercise could
be much costly than bottom-up approach. The Bottom-up
(voluntary) data collection by autonomous community (involving fishers,
middlemen, etc.) is considered cost-effective approach. However, efforts need
to be undertaken to ensure cooperation and reliability of information, e.g.
through enhancing the understanding of the community on fisheries management
and importance of data collection to support management. It was also suggested
that at the beginning, the bottom-up data collection by autonomous community
should be undertaken as pilot project in order to test the
effectiveness/reliability of data, before applying the approach nation-wide.
In addition, the questionnaires are one of the tools for data collection that
should be focused, simple and clear in order to
enable enumerators, autonomous community or fishers to provide information,
while also reduce unclear/confusion, e.g. equipped with photographs of fishing
grounds (map), fish species identification, etc. Well-designed forms would
facilitate the compilation and analysis of the data in order to come up with
reliable and meaningful results. Appropriate sample size (extraction number)
should be considered to ensure that the collected data could represent the
targeted group (population).
