Cost Effective Monitoring of Fishing Vessels

Catch and effort data is critical for fisheries research and development purposes. In the Maldives the traditional system of reporting of enumerated daily catch have been eroding - thanks to the rapid development of socio-economic status of the island communities and the mobility of fishing vessels. These developments have not helped in the efforts at improving the long-established traditional form of reporting of fish catches. Given the data is becoming critical for strategic fisheries development and management, innovative and cost effective means of readily obtaining reliable information on catch and fishing effort is now necessary.

The Statistics Section of the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture has been working on to improve catch and effort reporting by introducing fishery fishery log-books. The efforts have been slow and the time and resources involved in the effort is too high.

Tracking the Fishing Vessels

GPS systems are now routinely used in tuna fishing vessels. They help fishermen locate the FADs and navigate confidently in offshore waters and during night time. A pilot project in collaboration with the International firm - Trackwell will make use of GPS data to record the track of the fishing vessels during entire fishing trip. 

The project 'Cost Effective Monitoring of Coastal Fishing Vessels' will use GPS systems to record precisely the time and its position at pre-set intervals. Vessels in the range of GSM (mobile phone) network will transmit the recorded data at regular intervals computer servers at ground receiving stations which can later be accessed via Internet.

Translating the Track Data

The track data (as shown in the figure above) can be used in several ways. Computer algorithm delineate fishing areas and assign the time spent on fishing at location. Complemented by the log-book data it provides reliable information on catch, fishing effort and location of catch (bait fishing and tuna fishing for example).

The data can also be used for a wide variety of purposes including:

• Fisheries compliance (for instance to ensure fishermen complete certain number of fishing days in given period)
• Assess the effectiveness of FADs in quantitative terms (for instance we can say x% of fishing events are carried out on fad-associated schools
• help to ground truth the effectiveness of the Potential Fishery Zone predictions by the Ministry of Fisheries
• Helps to estimate the effective number of fishing vessels in the fleet

The pilot project is expect to start in January 2009. For further information please contact M. Shiham Adam

Updated: 28 December 2008.

Additional Information

Country Report on Fisheries and Statistics; Prepared by RC Anderson, MS Adam and H Rasheed for Indian Ocean Tuna Commission - OFCF Project. This report appeared in the IOTC publication l (?). >> Downlaod the report (PDF, ?? Kb)