By: Sergio Luiz Tutui

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Fishing is an activity that uses natural resources for multiple purposes (commercial purposes: industrial and artisanal fishing; non-commercial purposes: research, subsistence and sport/leisure). Fishery resources, such as natural goods, are considered public resources with free access, and it is up to the state to regulate this access.

These characteristics of the activity (multiple purposes associated with public natural resources) make the fishing activity very different from other human activities. While in extractivism, in general, the resources are found in a certain place, in fishing the resource moves, covering areas, communities, states…. While in agriculture or livestock, the producer owns his product, the fisherman owns only what he has captured, the owner is whoever catches first.

This characteristic of always chasing fishing resources and being the owner only of what you manage to catch, makes the activity one of the most difficult to manage.
Added to this is the heterogeneity of the actors involved. Huge industrial boats and artisanal fishermen's canoes may be competing for the same fish; from the fisherman who spent a thousand reais for a day of fishing to the one who doesn't catch anything, his family won't have anything to eat.

Therefore, understanding the biological, populational, ecological characteristics, the dynamics of the environment and its relationship with the fishery resource is essential, but it is essential that before thinking about managing the resource, the management of conflicts between users of these resources.

In this sense, it is essential to get rid of pre-existing concepts, the romantic or ideological view in the relationship between the small fisherman against the capital of large companies, or the person who goes fishing just for fun and recreation against the professional fisherman who seeks to maximize his production as a way to increase their income. Because usually what we conceptually consider correct is invariably too far from reality, thus undermining the most important thing — conflict management.

As a case to be analyzed. Usually, the blame is placed on reducing the abundance of fish resources in “predatory” fishing, with commercial fishing being the great villain when trying to capture as much as possible, as that is where their livelihood comes from. On the riverbank or on the pier of a marina, there will be no lack of someone who points to overfishing as the main evil of fishing.

I have a former student who, during her Master's Degree, studied bass fishing in Baixada Santista. In the work, she points out that while amateur fishermen indicate that overfishing is the main cause of the reduction of sea bass in the region, professional fishermen indicate pollution as the main cause.

Another former student, who also worked on his master's degree with bass fishing in Baixada Santista, raised 55 points of support for bass fishermen in the municipalities of the Santos Estuary (Praia Grande, São Vicente, Cubatão, Santos, Guarujá and Bertioga ).

If we consider that last year (2018), in spring, summer and autumn, one boat a day and in winter one boat every two days; that each boat had two fishermen (assuming the pilot does not fish); that one day a week these places do not open, we will have for these months: 55 points of departure by boat X 1 boat X 2 fishermen X 6 days X 4 weeks. In the end we will have 2,640 fishermen per month, or 23,760 fishermen during these seasons. The winter months will have half that amount of fishermen, that is, 1,320 fishermen, totaling 3,960 fishermen throughout the winter. Thus, considering the whole year, there were 27,720 amateur fishermen fishing for bass.

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If we consider that each fisherman only caught 1 sea bass of 800 g (approximate weight of one peva with minimum catch size). Amateur fishing captured 22.18 tons in 2018.

It is easy to see that these calculations were extremely conservative. In 2018 the winter was quite mild, with few cold fronts that hampered fishing. The pilot usually fishes, there are often more than two anglers and in addition the angler kills more than a single bass. Thus, we can consider this quantity as the minimum that should have been captured in 2018, and it could have been much more.

On the other hand, professional fishing, in this case considering the fishing that works within the estuary (artisanal fishing) or near it (artisanal and industrial fishing), landed in 2018 a total of 17.70 tons[1].

This small example was to demonstrate that, as stated above, it is essential to get rid of pre-existing concepts, because, in this case, if predatory fishing is the main cause of the reduction in the amount of bass, amateur fishermen represent the largest portion of this predatory fishing. But considering the opinion of professional fishermen on this issue, we also need to consider the pollution caused by the subnormal dwellings that exist in this estuary and its industrial hub, the port expansion projects, suppressing mangrove areas, in addition to all other human activities that occur in this location, it is not possible to blame only this or that sector.

Thus, it is essential to have a real scenario of the conditions of fisheries resources and natural characteristics, as well as to know who directly or indirectly impacts these resources, how this impact occurs, in order to carry out a real management of conflicts between these users, so that we can manage the fishery resource.
Therefore, for fisheries management, more than believing in absolute truths or magic solutions, it is essential to know that each case is different, not being able to believe that actions that worked in one situation are solutions for others.

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Nippak Newspaper Source

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