May 2013

According to Indonesian law, every fishing vessel which lands in a port or landing site should complete a logbook of its trip in order to record catches, fishing grounds and general fishing behavior. The law is currently concerned with large vessels of 30 GT and above, meaning that not a lot of emphasis is being placed on the smaller artisanal vessels such as the handline vessels which are the main focus of the Fishing & Living program. Hence, our team of field staff  in one site in South Sulawesi have been concentrating on socializing the importance of this logbook to the handline fishers and teaching them how best to complete the logbook, as well as supporting them in certain aspects such as measuring the fish weight and species identification. All this is done in close contact with the local government office, and all logbooks collected will be submitted to the government office for inclusion in national stock and catch calculations.

The team in South Sulawesi have even come up with an innovative way to ensure the fish  from different fishing grounds can be recorded separately by using different colored tags for the fish brought onboard by the fishermen while at sea.