Developing A Pilot Quota-based Fishery Management System For Fujian’s Portunus Crab Fishery

Abstract

China’s Ecological Civilization vision advances the sustainable development of the coastal marine fisheries in the nation’s policy agenda(Cao et al., 2017). As one of the main fisheries reform measures, a quota-based fisheries program has recently been developed to explore best management practices and generalizable experience that fits into China’s unique context. However, insufficient knowledge of the fishery’s ecological, social, cultural, and institutional dimensions has compromised the effectiveness of this approach to fisheries management. The thesis identifies the Fujian’s Portunus crab pilot program (PCPP) as a case study and develops a heuristic model of its natural-human-management sub-systems to advise future implementation of the management system. The model is developed from qualitative data collected from stakeholder interviews, literature reviews, field investigations, and applied fisheries simulation models to understand its ecological, socioeconomic, community, and institutional characteristics. A multidimensional sustainability assessment framework is established to scope PCPP’s fisheries system characteristics and examine a) the degree of fulfillment on each indicator with respect to their impacts on PCPP’s fisheries sustainability, and b) the degree of understanding with respect to stakeholders’ knowledge and data availability at current stage (Charles, 2001; Pitcher & Preikshot, 2001). A theoretical PCPP fishery is established using the size-structured discrete-time model and Data-limited Toolkit to provide preliminary management strategies evaluations for the PCPP (Schnute, 1987; Carruthers & Hordyk, 2018a). Six major challenges to the success of current practices of Portunus crab management are identified. They include: no universal understanding for stakeholders with respect to the definition of a quota-based fisheries management system; the incompatibility problems between China’s existing legislative framework and PCPP management plan; misaligned stakeholder interests that challenge the scientific principles of implementing catch limits in PCPP; inadequate management capacity to support the current policy practices; the oversimplification of multispecies issues in PCPP management considerations; institutional limitations with respect to stakeholders’ unbalanced participation in PCPP initiative. The framework identifies that a) the deficiencies in ecological dimension limits science capacity of TAC system and deficiencies, b) the deficiencies in equity and IUU fishing compromises the compliance and performance, and c) the deficiencies in the socioeconomic dimension provide limited knowledge ground on the fisheries efficiency improvement regarding social and economic benefits as the management objectives. The preliminary model analysis identifies effort to control as the most advantaged management strategy based on the PCPP’s available data. The model also examines yield per recruit, spawning biomass per recruitment, biological reference points, and the relationship between average yield and exploitation rates to provide implications on PCPP’s fisheries management. Based on the systematic analysis of the Fujian swimming crab fishery, the study proposes the following scenarios in PCPP’s future management implementation, including 1) developing an adaptative management planning grounded in the multifaceted aspects of the fishery system, 2) establishing new institutional mechanism for equal stakeholder participation in the decision-making process, 3) strengthening science-based fisheries management capacity toward a well-managed direction, 4) providing legal authority to enforce PCPP new management measures, 5) building consensus with consideration of stakeholder knowledge ground and alignment of interests, 6) understanding the ecological complexities of the PCPP fishery.