Inland Fisheries

2.3.2 Constraints in fisheries data collection

The major constraints in data collection on fisheries and related aspects are as

Lack of clearly stated management objectives for fishery data collection;

Lack of sufficient funding;

Extreme variability(small scale, part time and seasonal fishing operations);

Inadequate system design and coordination (fragmented and incomplete data system);

Inadequate information processing and analysis systems;

Non-compliance with rules and regulations by the fishermen;

Lack of skilled manpower;

No involvement of local communities in management and data collection ;

Inadequacy of data collection systems

No sampling design

Reported data by fishermen-leads to misreporting

Capture fishery mainly traditional-no fix time and landing centres,

Grouping of data reported- no species data are available

Routine collection of biological data-only project based.

Socio-economic data not collected on a routine basis;

Frame survey-no information about fishing villages, fishers population and their gears and boats, landing centres, water bodies, etc.,

Lack of coordination between different agencies, institutes, states;

No validation of data collected and compiled;

Lack of two way linkage among enumerators, data managers and end users;

Inappropriate data collection methods including insufficient use of sample survey

Non-standard classification and definition of water bodies, gears,boats, species, etc.;

Inaccurate reporting by administration;

Discontinuity in funding disrupting time series data;

Fishermen’s unwillingness to give information;

Lack of flexibility for reporting estimates at different levels;

Cross- checking mechanism to validate survey estimate is not followed.

• Deliberate misreporting
• Lack of attention to small-scale fishing activites
• Lack of status, capacity or training of local fishery officers,
• Errors in catch reporting (often field data is collected based on ‘recall’);
• Difficulty in accessing sources of information (women, children and other fishers far from population centres);
• A reluctance to report catches because this is linked, in most countries, to license fees or other forms of taxation.
• The collection of fish production statistics from inland water is beset with serious difficulties,the main in respect of riverine and estuarine fisheries are,
• Highly dispersed and isolated nature of fishing and landing areas.
• The density of fishing gear and tackly employed and a high percentage of subsistence fishing
• The innumerable landing places
• The migration of fishermen from one area to the other for fishing
• The prevailing system of fish merchants buying off catches from the fishing boats at the fishing spots.
• The multispecies composition of catches and the landing of catches in unsorted condition
• Isolated nature of fishing areas lower estuaries direct observations are very limited.