Five archetypes of small-scale fisheries reveal a continuum of strategies

Summary

Small-scale fisheries data were empirically compiled through country-level case studies and characterized using a characterization matrix tool as part of the Illuminating Hidden Harvests (IHH) initiative. More than 1,000 marine fishery units (n = 1,255) from 43 countries were analysed using a multilevel LCCA technique to identify stable groupings or archetypes as described below. Case study countries were selected through a ranking process based on their absolute and per capita contributions to production and employment and the importance of fish as a source of protein in peoples’ diets as per ref. 8. Small-scale fisheries included for analysis represented approximately 88% of the marine small-scale catch for those countries and 66% of the global estimated marine small-scale catch for the period 2013–20178. This global estimate (25.1 million tonnes, representing 31% of the global marine catch) was derived from observed data across 52 case studies and model-based extrapolations for an additional 100 countries (see section B1.1 of the supplementary material in ref. 8 for a detailed description).Characterization matrix toolMarine small-scale fisheries were characterized in a systematic and objective manner using the characterization matrix tool adapted by Funge-Smith et al.48 from Funge-Smith47. This matrix captures 13 fishery attributes related to the operational (for example, fishing trip duration), technological (for example, refrigeration capacity), socio-economic (for example, disposal of catch) and post-harvest use of the catch to create a standardized framework for intercomparability across countries and regions. The definitions of the fishery attributes are provided in the Supplementary Table 1. Each of the 13 attributes of the matrix can be individually scored (0, 1, 2, 3) (Extended Data Table 2). The aggregation of all the scores from the 13 attributes provides a total characterization score for the fishery that ranges from a minimum of 0 (for example, the mo...