SOCIAL IMPACTS

In many situations, and especially in developing countries, the collection and grow-out of juveniles present more socio-economic advantages than hatchery-based aquaculture since the collection and sale of juveniles to grow-out operators can provide employment and income for sectors of the population that are otherwise not able to participate in the aquaculture industry. This is especially important where advanced technology and expensive hatcheries are limited. In addition, capture-based aquaculture can support rural development and provide alternative or supplemental livelihoods, especially to women and children. There is also a strong relationship with the capture fisheries industry.

Ogburn and Johannes (1999) report the positive effects of collection of grouper juveniles in the Philippines, where fewer people now practice destructive fishing and where there has been a reduction in fishing pressure on wild caught adults and less targeting of spawning aggregations, which otherwise leads to overexploitation (Johannes and Riepen, 1995; Birkland, 1997). Tisdell and Poirine (2000) report that in one island group in French Polynesia a quarter of all families earn a living from the pearl industry by selling spat to larger farms. This reliance on wild spat has led to conservation of adults to ensure continued supply of oysters, and provided a model for other nations in the Pacific which have begun to conserve wild stocks of blacklip pearl oysters to pave the way for development of their own pearl industries (Friedman, 1999). The economic returns to a Muslim community in Northeast Sumatra in Indonesia have meant that its members can now make the pilgrimage to Mecca thanks to the profits of the grouper business (Ottolenghi et al., 2004). Hair et al. (2002) state that in response to McAllister’s (1999) concerns about aquaculture depriving local fishers of their livelihood, the capture and culture of wild juveniles should actually increase the opportunities to earn income, provided the grow-out of the animals occurs in the country of harvest.

Capture-based aquaculture operations are generally located in rural areas and can make considerable contributions to rural economies. Capture-based aquaculture can result in significant economic multipliers through the economy through employment, more diverse household livelihoods, small business development, purchase of goods and services, increases in income and food security and generation of foreign exchange. This is especially true for areas with depressed and marginal economies and limited employment opportunities, such as occurred with bluefin tuna aquaculture near Port Lincoln, Australia (Ottolenghi et al., 2004). With the constant reduction in fishing opportunities, another fishery-related industry is often a welcome alternative for the existing workforce. New skills are developed for aquaculture operations, for example, specialized divers to capture and handle tuna. In addition to the actual capture of wild seed, employment opportunities are also made available in aquaculture production and marketing. Many fishers have become active partners in aquaculture activities, either as suppliers of inputs or as farmers.
On the other hand, the collection and grow-out of juveniles present a number of socio-economic disadvantages to hatchery-based aquaculture. Capture-based aquaculture can employ inappropriate technologies and skills, and users may undertake unsustainable practices to supply farmers with wild seed. Other impacts may include exclusion of the poor from participating in (by being physically removed), or enjoying the benefits of, wild seed collection and aquaculture production; resource appropriation by elites and/or politically powerful sectors; conflict and violence.
The use of wild seed puts stress on fish recruitment for the capture fisheries and on the biodiversity of the capture areas. The harvest of gravid female shrimp and post larvae can negatively affect biodiversity by contributing to declining fish stocks. This ecological decline results in social disruptions as well. Epler (1992) states that fishers feel that the methods used to capture post-larvae shrimp in Ecuador negatively affect the finfish and crustacean fisheries because of bycatch. Cruz (1992) notes that conflicts such as these threatened relationships among community members in Mexican coastal communities. In the Solomon Islands, the introduction of the live reef food fish trade brought about three issues of highest concern to community members: the low prices paid by the company (prices were the same as, or only slightly above, the rates for dead fish); the wastage of fish, both bycatch and post-capture mortality (the fishery obtained a reputation for being wasteful of food resources, especially in remote areas where the bycatch and dead target fish could not be fully used by the villages due to the large amounts and limited consumption and/or storage ability, or due to the distances of the fishing sites from the village); and concern over the targeting of spawning aggregation sites (especially related to ownership and use-rights disputes) (Sadovy, Donaldson and Graham, 2003).
Haylor and Bland (2001) report that many negative consequences associated with aquaculture in rural development relate to a weak institutional context. These include poor coordination and coherence between sectors (e.g. Ministry of Fisheries promoting aquaculture and Ministry of Environment promoting environmental protection); unclear mandates; unclear public/private sector responsibilities; tenure, property and user right uncertainties; weak regulatory regimes and enforcement capacity; rent seeking; ineffective communication strategies; and little involvement of primary stakeholders. Without some form of intervention, short-term financial perspectives tend to dominate environmental and social issues. Thus, there is a strong case for strategic planning of aquaculture development, rather than being reactive and uncoordinated. There is also a need for a partnership between the public and private sectors to address this weak institutional context.
Marketing and credit relationships between wild seed collectors and buyers and middlemen, such as the “suki” patronage relationship in the Philippines and “bertaukeh” in Malaysia, can affect harvesting patterns and buying and selling practices, and force fry collectors to use unsustainable practices (Pomeroy and Trinidad, 1995). Collectors may over harvest certain areas to repay outstanding loans, be dictated to as to whom the seed should be sold, or be exploited by receiving lower prices for the seed. This patronage can further contribute to the perpetuation of an oligopsonistic market structure in which each of a few buyers exerts a disproportionate influence on the market. Reporting on the live reef food fish trade, Sadovy, Donaldson and Graham (2003) state that while fishers may gain income in the short-term, in many cases they end up indebted to brokers or required to fish in a way that is incompatible with local practices and habits.
The waters from which wild seed are collected are most often considered to be open access. These waters provide multiple social, economic and environmental goods and services to local users. The harvest of wild seed does not always benefit society, as there is high wastage and dissipated economic benefits from bycatch, and can lead to a variety of user conflicts. It can also threaten traditional marine tenure arrangements and social and cultural practices and norms. Corruption and coercion may also increase. Seed collection concessions, as exist in the Philippines, privatize the resources and restrict access by certain users. In the Kei Islands in Indonesia the arrival of outside catchers for groupers saw conflicts soon develop between local fishers and the “foreign” fishing operations. These conflicts were in part over the perceived damage to the reefs from the use of cyanide, but of possibly greater significance was the villagers’ perception that the outside operators were violating local access rights. As the industry matured, conflicts and tensions developed more within the communities – fisher against fisher, family against family – over rights to fish areas and over the methods used (Sadovy, Donaldson and Graham, 2003). Conflicts can arise between collectors and other resource users such as fishers and tourism. There can be a loss of potential alternative income generating opportunities, such as scuba diving and other ecotourism related activities, with loss of biodiversity and habitat destruction. The types of conflicts and the impacts of exploitation of wild seed for aquaculture can be unpredictable and site and species-specific.
Access to marine resources once utilized solely by small capture fishers, for example, can be opened to local and migratory wild seed collectors through capture based aquaculture. Epler (1992) notes that the need for post-larvae shrimp has contributed to social problems which are not specifically tied to user conflicts. Coastal communities seasonally inundated with post-larval fishers do not have the resources to cope with the influx of so many newcomers. They lack adequate sanitation, education and medical facilities and there were complaints about dirty beaches and shanty towns. The economic gains to these communities are minimal as the wealth associated with shrimp mariculture returns with the transient fishers or is exported out of the country. In Bermuda, the fishing and capture-based aquaculture industries wanted to increase the quantity of fish that they were allowed to catch, in order to satisfy local demand and increase both market shares and income. However, the tourism industry wanted to decrease fishing quotas because it needs a thriving aquatic life for tourists to enjoy. By the 1980s, the stock of grouper had declined, and tourism had the upper hand (Ottolenghi et al., 2004).
Padilla et al. (2003) conducted a community and social impact assessment to determine the relationship between the live reef fishing industry and social issues and problems. They found that the current state of the live reef fish trade in the Calamianes Islands in the Philippines is socially unsustainable. There is greater competition among fishers, both locally and from outside the area, for resources causing increased damage to the ecosystem. The fishers have a low regard for local government and national line agencies in resource management, seeing them as ineffective. Local governments are seen as being controlled by official’s vested interests and controlled by local financial and political elites. The barangay local government is regarded as having more significance and potential relevance than municipal or provincial governments. Fishers have little regard for their role in overall decision-making and for their relation with local government units regarding the live reef fish trade. Most fishers believe that only
local and financial elites have the capacity to make decisions. There is a high level of dependency of fishers on brokers and financiers for money which has resulted in an inequitable distribution of benefits. Live reef fishing has become the major economic activity for most of the communities in the Calamianes Islands. The dependency arrangements, inequitable distribution of benefits, growing threat to food security, limited access to basic services and weak socio-cultural cohesion in the communities is leading to a significant level of social instability.
Several case studies are presented to further illustrate the social advantages and disadvantages of capture-based aquaculture.

Case study: Philippine milkfish fry collectors

Two major studies of milkfish fry collection have been undertaken in the Philippines. One was undertaken in the early 1980s (Chong, Smith and Lizarondo, 1982) and the other in the late 1990s (Ahmed et al., 2001). A brief summary of these reports provides a good description of milkfish seed collectors and collection practices.
Chong, Smith and Lizarondo (1982) found that there are a number of different passive or active filtration methods used to gather fry, ranging from the simple scissors dip-net that can easily be used by children, to the more sophisticated bulldozer net which can be operated with a motorized vessel. By far the most common method used by gatherers is sagap, a seine of up to five metres in length. Gatherers work in teams, the composition of which depends upon the gear used. Sagap requires two members to use the net, and an optional third member to carry fry from the net to a basin on shore in which fry are temporarily stored, and to sort out predators and other unwanted species. The attractiveness of the sakag or hudhud and the sweeper comes from their being easily handled by a single gatherer. Bulldozer nets are used primarily at night with lanterns and propelled by bamboo poles by a pair of gatherers at depths of up to three meters. Fry are scooped from the net with a white porcelain basin, against the background of which the eyes of the almost transparent fry can be seen. After being stored temporarily on the beach, fry are either delivered to the concessionaire, to be counted so that the gatherer can be paid for the day’s catch, or stored by the gatherer for later sale. Counting fry is done by a two-member team. While fry are being temporarily stored in clay pots or plastic basins, predatory and competitive species are sorted out and discarded. Unwanted fish are most often discarded on the beach rather than returned to the sea. Revenue from the daily catch is usually divided equally among team members, with an extra share going to the owner of the gear. Most gatherers are part-time fishers, with fry gathering contributing only 22 percent to total household income. Rates of return are lowest in the fry gathering sub-sector, in comparison to fry traders and dealers, where thousands of fry gatherers participate. The low returns to fry gatherers reflect, in part, the lack of other income-generating opportunities available to them, and also the effect on fry prices of the concession arrangement. Because gatherers are restricted to selling only to the concessionaire, they receive a lower price than would prevail if there were open-access to the fry fishery and they could sell freely in the open market. One solution to this dilemma is to encourage the formation of gatherer cooperatives to be awarded concession rights for a possibly reduced fee, in which case they could earn the profits that formerly accrued to concessionaires plus a share of the resource rent.
Ahmed et al. (2001) found that fry gathering has been a traditional family activity for the majority of the respondents. They joined the fry gathering business through the influence of their neighbours and friends. They saw fry gathering as a lucrative additional source of income to supplement their income from other sources (i.e. fishing). In addition to fry gathering, respondents were also engaged in fishing, fish vending, daily labour, nipa-making and farming. About 65 percent were involved in fishing. Despite the alleged scarcity of fry in the wild, 97 percent of the respondents did not plan to stop their involvement in fry gathering. This is probably because the activity gives them an income with little requirement of capital. During the peak season of fry demand, the average monthly income from gathering fry was approximately US$90. During lean months, the monthly average income was approximately US$10.
The milkfish fry of the Philippines are essentially an open access resource. The national government has empowered coastal municipalities to grant local “monopsonies” (limited to one buyer) to concessionaires in the form of exclusive rights of first purchase of fry. These concessions are generally awarded through a public bidding process. Access to fry gathering, however, is not restricted in any way, as long as the gatherer sells to the designated concessionaire. The concessionaires have two options in fry gathering: (i) to employ fry gatherers on a daily wage, or (ii) to allow the fry gatherers to use the fry grounds on the condition that 2/3 of the total catch will go to the concessionaire and the remaining 1/3 to the fry gatherers. Some concessionaires require fry gatherers to sell their share to them at a price lower than the prevailing market price. Income from the concession license fee goes directly to the municipality. Because fry grounds are, for the most part, in rural areas, municipalities with fry grounds often have very limited income from other sources. The high value of a concession compared with other components of municipal income has thus resulted in the vast majority of fry grounds in the country being managed under concession license fees. Concessionaires are free to dispose of their fry as they please provided they comply with the government auxiliary invoices required for interregional shipment of fry (Chong, Smith and Lizarondo. 1982; Ahmed et al., 2001).
The concession arrangement has a major effect on the incidence of risk in the short run. Because annual bidding for concession rights is held before the fry season begins, the risks of poor catch (and windfall profits in good years) are very neatly passed from the municipality to the entrepreneur who is awarded the concession. In the long run, of course, these risks and windfalls would be taken into account by prospective concessionaires before they bid for the concession. Since the municipality collects from a single entity for each fry ground or fry zone, the risk of lost income to the municipal government, due to collection difficulties, is also much reduced. The system of awarding concessions also provides incentive for the development of new fry grounds, as the initial investment of the concessionaire is protected through a one- to three-year contract of exclusive rights granted him by the municipal council (Chong, Smith and Lizarondo, 1982). The concession arrangement severely restricts the level of competition at the early stages after fry catch due to large capital requirements to finance concession fees, especially for the most sought after fry grounds. This has encouraged vertical integration in the industry as nursery pond operators, in particular, have sought to assure supply of fry for their ponds.

Case study: Viet Nam grouper seed collectors

Tuan and Hambrey (2000) examined technical, environmental and socio-economic issues related to wild grouper seed supply in Khanh Hoa Province in Central Viet Nam. The households studied collect approximately 200 000 seed each year, mainly “black grouper”: Epinephelus akaara, Epinephelus bleekeri, Epinephelus coioides, Epinephelus malabaricus, Epinephelus merra and Epinephelus sexfasciatus. Among the fishing gears, seine net, scoop net and push net were mainly used for collecting small fish of 1–3 cm. Seine nets provided the highest yield (catch per unit effort) in terms of number of pieces per trip. For larger seed, encircling nets, used together with artificial reefs, were the most important in terms of quantity and quality of catch. The seasonality of use of different gears reflects the growth of the seed and their move to deeper water as the season progresses.
The fishers reportedly had to spend more time to catch the same amount of seed compared with previous years. Seed production appears to be in decline, as is the capture trend for grouper in the province, and for the demersal marine finfish. The reasons for the decline of fishing production of commercial demersal marine finfish in general, and grouper in particular, include overexploitation, especially of broodstock; using harmful fishing gears such as motorized push-nets, trawling nets, dynamite, and sodium cyanide; and nursery habitat destruction. The primary buyers were nursery farmers, grow-out farmers and middlemen. The middlemen were the main buyers, and their price was up to double the fishermen’s price.
The average income of collector households from seed collection was approximately US$700 per year, and return on labour varied between US$1–3 per day. Sadovy (2000) found that income from grouper fry/fingerling fisheries contributes 10–50 percent to the annual income of fishers, and a single fisher’s income from this source can reach as much as US$3 080 annually. In recent years, the number of collectors has decreased as some have moved to offshore fishing activities, which were funded by the central government. The fishermen prefer the new job where they can receive a higher return on labour than from collecting fry. Alternative non-fishing jobs such as aquaculture can help the fishers in lower income classes to escape from poverty. Small-scale, mainly family-run, cage culture of grouper in Khanh Hoa Province (Viet Nam) is now a significant activity, providing a relatively high return to labour compared with existing alternative activities. For the future, hatchery production will be the only way to provide sufficient seed to allow the industry to expand. The high and increasing price of seed should make hatchery production economically viable, despite its technical difficulty.

Case study: Coral reef species

A suggested alternative to the hatchery production of many coral reef species is the feasibility of harvesting pre-settlement fishes from the plankton in numbers that do not affect the replenishment of natural populations and rearing them for sale to the ornamental trade or as juveniles for grow-out (Hair, Bell and Doherty, 2002). The fact that only a small percentage of marine species that settle into nursery habitats survive to become breeding adults is a persuasive argument for using some of the settling cohort to increase productivity through grow-out in aquaculture. Responsible application of aquaculture based on animals captured from the wild will depend on capturing juveniles before they experience the severe mortality associated with settlement, limiting the catch to ensure replenishment of spawning biomass, returning sufficient juveniles to the wild to compensate fisheries targeting adults and use of capture methods that minimize bycatch of non-target species and do not damage supporting habitats. If artisanal fisheries for the capture and culture of pre-settlement fish can be established in a responsible manner, they should enhance the employment and economic opportunities for coastal communities (Hair, Bell and Doherty, 2002). Although the capture and culture of post-larvae is unlikely to meet the demand for all the tropical marine fish required by the ornamental trade, it has created important niche markets, for example, for eco-labelled specimens which increase the value of the fish caught and reared in an environmentally sustainable manner and provides economic returns to coastal villagers (Wood, 2001; Ottolenghi et al., 2004).