Inland Fisheries

"The book covers fishery assessments, habitat and community manipulations, and common practices for managing stream, river, lake, and anadromous fisheries. Chapters on history; ecosystem management; management processes; communications with the public; introduced, undesirable, and endangered species; and the legal and regulatory frameworks provide the context for modern fisheries management." From fisheries.org.

The current high demand for fish and increased awareness of the role of the environment in supporting human well being has led to a situation where attitudes to inland water resources are changing rapidly. Trends in resource use and environmental impact are very evident in inland waters which are particularly vulnerable as they act as collectors of all the activities occurring in their basins and rank as some of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. The principle changes influencing the evolution of the aquatic resource for fisheries are described in this book, which has been compiled for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

This booklet provides non-technical information on key aspects of responsible inland fisheries development and management, as given in the FAO document on "Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries No. 6" (9251040427).

Study carried out in six agro-climatic zones in West Bengal, India.

Culture-based fisheries have relatively high production, but need strictly enforced closed seasons to allow fish to grow, an activity which excludes poor subsistence fishers. However, in some places people who participated with the expectations of considerable personal gains ceded when more resilient lower-cost practices such as sanctuaries were adopted. Local equity issues are partly mitigated when poor people are allowed to catch small (non-stocked species) for food. In the floodplains, public stocking has not been sustained as access to these larger open systems is difficult to control and participants are unable to capture enough benefits or raise funds from the wider community, while landowners tend to take advantage of the situation and catch more of the stocked fish. In smaller, more closed waterbodies, groups of fishers are able to control access and can profit, but the risks and need for capital are high.

The FAO Fishery and Aquaculture Circular C942 Revision 3 (C942 Rev. 3) updates and expands the scope of previous revisions of the circular. C942 Rev. 3 is an important baseline document, intended to assist in the global understanding of inland fisheries and inform dialogue on their current and future role. The third revision reviews the status and trends of inland fisheries catch at global, continental and subcontinental levels. It places inland capture fisheries in the context of overall global fish production, and calls attention to the importance of inland capture fisheries with respect to food security and nutrition and the Sustainable Development Goals. It quantifies global inland fisheries resources in terms of food production, nutrition, employment, economic contribution with respect to those countries/regions or subnational areas where they are important. A characterization approach to distinguish large-scale and small-scale fishing operations and their relative contributions is provided. The review provides estimated economic values of inland fisheries, as well as a valuation of potential replacement cost of these (in terms of dollars, other resources such as land and water, feeds). There is also an analysis of the extent and economic value of recreational inland fisheries. The contribution to employment and the gender differences related to this are quantified. The linkages between inland fisheries and biodiversity are also explored. C942 Rev. 3 discusses ways to measure and assess inland fisheries, in particular, how to establish more accurately inland fishery catches in the many situations where there are challenges to collection of catch statistics.