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Community Achieves Higher Economic Returns but Neglects Ecological Sustainability: A Case from a Coastal Trap-net Fishery from Northern Sri Lanka

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  • Balancing sustainable utilisation goals and equity in socio-economic outcomes become challenging in managing artisanal fisheries, confronted by fluctuating fisheries-resources and poor management-structures. Such artisanal trap-net fishery called "Paddi-Valai" has been targeting shrimps in Anthoniyaarpuram coast in northern Sri Lanka. But its main by-catch, blue swimming crab (BSC), Portunus pelagicus, has increasing demand from export-markets assuring higher economic-returns. Therefore, how this fisher-community tries to maintain equitable sharing of economical-returns was evaluated from October-2014 to December-2015. Forty-eight fishermen practice this fishery: each has 2-3 fishing-units and each unit is harvested in every-other-day. Collectors and retailers earned huge profits by directly purchasing crabs from fisherman for cheaper-price and selling for export-market. Therefore, fishers came-up with a community-based catch selling mechanism: where all fishers have to handover their catches to a member who appointed from their community. The responsibility of this member is to bargain with retailers for a bestselling-price and distribute the income among fishers. Though the new-mechanism takes 2-3 days for fishers to get a price for their catch, the average monthly income had doubled due to high bargaining-power. Fishers are 100% satisfied on new selling-mechanism but as a result huge quantities of smaller BSC (<50g and <7cm carapace width) which were not landed previous are now been landed seeking any price, even under lowest-grade. Therefore, 85% of BSC which taken into the landing-site, during January-February, were smaller than the L50, 7.68cm carapace width. Hence, balancing sustainable utilisation goals and equity in socio-economic outcomes are an urgent need through ecosystem based approach.
  • Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
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  • Challenging New Frontiers in the Global Seafood Sector: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 11-15, 2016. Compiled by Stefani J. Evers and Ann L. Shriver. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET), Corvallis, 2016.
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  • Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
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  • 0976343290

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