Edited by Tony J. Pitcher, Cameron H. Ainsworth, and Megan Bailey.

DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD

This Report presents two contributions of very unequal length on the fisheries of Raja Ampat, in Eastern Indonesia. The second of these is devoted to a neat account of the economics of an anchovy fishery which developed without being monitored by official statistics, as probably most small-scale fisheries do throughout the world. It is also, apparently, a profitable fishery, and this again raises questions about the usual neglect of small-scale fisheries.

It is, however, the first of these contributions which I want to elaborate on, as it connects very deeply to my personal trajectory. In 1975 and 1976, I worked in western Indonesia, with a freshly-minted Master of Fisheries, in an 'aid' project devoted to the development of trawl fisheries of the Java Sea and adjacent areas. I did not know then much about fisheries in general, and tropical fisheries in particular, but I realized, upon seeing my very first multi-species trawl haul wiggling on deck that it would be impossible to estimate, using 'classical methods' (i.e., those I had been taught), the parameters of growth, natural mortality, etc., required for the (single-species) models that were then in vogue for the management of fisheries.

This realization was the start of my personal research program, devoted to identifying pattern in the growth and mortality parameters across a number of species, which could be used to infer their likely value in the absence of local data, and of methods for their estimation, given a minimum of such data. This program, which coincided with that of many fisheries scientists at the time (including T.J. Pitcher, one of the authors of the contribution commented upon here), was rather successful, as reflected in this very Report.

Raja Ampat, in Eastern Indonesia, is near the centre of the world's marine biodiversity, but it is, by any other standard, an extremely peripheral area, notably as science goes. It could be inferred, therefore, that, as the phrase goes, "nothing is known on [whatever] in the area".

But this is not so. An amazing amount of data is available on virtually all areas of the world, including areas as 'remote' as Raja Ampat, even if we go back as far as the 17th century. The point is to know where to find these seemingly dead data, and to make them alive again. One way to do this is through the compilation and analysis of observations by the naturalists of successive historic expeditions, and the narrative of travellers, as illustrated in an earlier report on the same area by 'Deng' Palomares and 'Sheila' Heymans . The other approach to overcoming the dictum that "nothing is known…", documented in this Report, is to combine locally available, but scattered data (which always exists) with general patterns on the distribution, feeding and production of fish and invertebrates, derived from databases such as Fishbase.

Reading this document, I have a sense that the work we did the last thirty years actually was useful: we now have the tools to build realistic models, and to propose practical schemes for the management of just about any marine ecosystem in the world. Not bad. These tools work only when in good hands, but clearly, this is here the case. I conclude, therefore, by congratulating the authors for a job well done.

Daniel Pauly
Director Fisheries Centre, UBC

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A growing awareness of the decline in ecosystem health and the depletion of resources world-wide has led researchers to explore the use of ecosystem-based management (EBM), an approach that integrates ecological, social, and economic goals, and explicitly recognizes humans as key components within an ecosystem. EBM is still in its infancy, and a number of research projects have been launched to try to increase understanding, develop EBM tools, and attempt to mitigate or even reverse at least the worst of the present trends.

One such study is within the Coral Triangle, spanning eastern Indonesia, parts of Malaysia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, where the highest coral reef biodiversity on earth has been measured. At the heart of the Coral Triangle is the Bird's Head Seascape, off the west coast of Papua Province, Indonesia. This is still a relatively remote and pristine area, home to about 75% of the world's reef-building coral species, and over 1,000 fish species. The Raja Ampat archipelago, where Alfred Wallace made a home in the 1830s, has attracted the interests of conservation groups and scientists, and has been selected as one of the top conservation priorities in the world. The high level of biodiversity has lead to a growing marine tourism sector, and the newly decentralized government is trying to develop the area sustainably for the 31,000 inhabitants. Following a proposal, funding was generously provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to researchers and scientists from Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the State University of Papua (UNIPA), and the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, for a project entitled, "Toward Ecosystem-Based Management in the Bird's Head Functional Seascape of Papua, Indonesia". Three teams at the Fisheries Centre are working to provide a synthesis of key ecological, economic and historical components, supporting field teams from UNIPA, TNC, CI and WWF who are sampling and collecting data. This report represents the second of UBC's contributions to the Bird's Head Seascape EBM project .

The first paper in this report, from the Fisheries Ecosystems Restoration Research group, describes the development of a 98-functional group ecosystem simulation model (Ecopath with Ecosim, EwE) for Raja Ampat, fitted to local time series abundance and CPUE data, and driven by local climate changes. Fine-scaled local models for three areas (Kofiau Island, Misool Island, and the Dampier Strait) are also included. Several novel approaches have been added to this model, including a new algorithm for estimating diets based on fish gape size, body depth and habitat co-occupation. These EwE models will be further refined with data from the field teams on diets and fisheries, and with the results of interviews with fishers on perceived changes in the Raja Ampat ecosystem. The aim is to use the models to develop optimal management scenarios in order to provide EBM advice that can be appraised by stakeholders in the Raja Ampat archipelago.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is now widely recognized as undermining management goals. The second paper in this report, from the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, uses field observations to estimate the unreported and unregulated catch of anchovies in Kabui Bay, Raja Ampat. The estimates include uncertainty, revenues, costs and the apparent profitability of the fishery. Results suggest that fisheries managers in Raja Ampat could consider capturing some of the fishery rent. The UBC team hopes to provide an IUU estimate for all of Raja Ampat upon the completion of the project, and the anchovy estimate will contribute to this.

Tony J. Pitcher, Cameron H. Ainsworth and Megan Bailey
Vancouver, May 2007

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