Harvesting trend of the pelagic fish resource in North Maluku Province waters (IFMA 715)

Sustainable harvesting of the marine living resources in North Maluku Province would provide employment and economic benefit to broad-scale coastal communities. The pelagic fish resource has been the backbone of marine capture fisheries in this area for years. Mapping the ten years of harvesting would enhance the common baseline to improve the existing instrument for fisheries management. Data limited fisheries approach based on landing records was applied to perform the harvest trend of these typical fisheries. The analysis was performed based on four representative groups of species (skipjack, kawa-kawa, scads, and anchovies) and four main fishing gears regularly recorded (pelagic seiner, beach seine, pole and line, and gillnet) for more than one decade. The result showed that the harvesting system slightly increased since 2002, indicated by 170 % in landing volume and 4 % in the number of gears. The estimated value of landing in 2020 at about 2.6 trillion IDR significantly increased compared to 203 billion IDR in 2002. This multi-scale harvesting trend of pelagic fisheries could increase fishing mortality without regular monitoring and evaluation. It is suggested that improving the existing fisheries management plan for the sustainability of the pelagic fisheries business should be evaluated regularly to provide a long-term beneficiary for coastal community fishery livelihood dependence for the North Moluccas Province.