1 - Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean Region

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The main purpose of this chapter is to outline the structure of the present book, to introduce some of the issues and themes that are to be considered in more detail throughout the volume, and to highlight some of the book's principal findings. The book, which is primarily aimed at furthering the debate on the various impacts of fisheries policies in the Indian Ocean in order to facilitate a new regional policy direction, is organized into three broad sections — fisheries policy frameworks, fisheries resource exploitation, and fisheries policy directions — each of which contains five essays. Before embarking on a discussion of the principal findings of each essay, there will be a brief discussion of fisheries as a resource that will entail a consideration of the global and regional significance of fish stocks and their association with marine biodiversity and fisheries ownership.

FISHERIES AS A RESOURCE

The Global and Regional Significance of Fish Stocks

Fishing is central to the livelihood and food security of approximately 200 million people around the world, with large concentrations especially concentrated in the developing world, while one in five of the world's population depends on fish as a primary source of protein (UNEP 2008). However, as has been pointed out:

For centuries, humanity has seen the sea as an infinite source of food, a boundless sink for pollutants, and a tireless sustainer of coastal habitats. It isn't. Scientists have mounting evidence of rapidly accelerating declines in once-abundant populations of cod, haddock, flounder, and scores of other fish species, as well as molluscs, crustaceans, birds, and plants. They are alarmed at the rapid rate of destruction of coral reefs, estuaries, and wetlands and the sinister expansion of vast “dead zones” of water where life has been choked away. More and more, the harm to marine biodiversity can be traced not to natural events but to inadequate policies (Wilder, Tegner and Dayton 1999, p. 57; emphasis added).