1182 1183
Caveat: All data, no matter the source and its credibility and depth, has its own flaws and 1184
uncertainties. Censuses are the most accurate, unbiased and complete sources of data, but were very 1185
rare. National registers were an invaluable source of information and were the most widely used. One 1186
must, however, carefully consider their scope. It is not uncommon for national registers to ignore 1187
vessels under a certain size from registration. An extreme example of this is the Australian General 1188
register of ships (www.amsa.gov.au), which grants exemption to any vessel under 24m and is not 1189
fishing on the high seas. This is significant as the largest portion of country fishing fleets is commonly 1190
under 24m (e.g. EU fleet). When compared to the last complete documentation of the Australian fleets 1191
in the 1980s, this suggests that the AMSA data only captured 20-30% of vessels. In this case, however, 1192
it is important to note that, given the substantial restructuring of the fleet since then (due to a vessel 1193
buyback scheme) and the commercialization of the fleet, the AMSA numbers are, however, likely to 1194
be reflective of the active vessels.
1195
Even the European Register of Vessels, arguably the most extensive database of vessels in 1196
both number and depth of information, shows merely a snapshot of the European fleet. The database 1197
was developed through the 90s, and as such, vessels destroyed or retired prior to the consolidation 1198
of the register might be absent. Most of the data for the earlier years should thus be considered with 1199
caution, as probably it is likely underestimated. The disaggregation between small-scale and industrial 1200
sectors was furthermore subject to interpretation. While all vessels over 12m of length in the Register 1201
are considered industrial, ‘towed vessels’ under 12m are, by law, industrial as well. As a vast extend 1202
of vessels are equipped with more than one gear type, this leaves the absolute numbers of small-scale 1203
(thereafter artisanal) and industrial vessels estimated in this study to debate.
1204
Our study has tried to avoid these issues by widely sourcing information. Expanding data 1205
sources, however, has its drawbacks, such as dealing with contradictions, which were often more 1206
difficult to tackle than missing figures. As the artisanal sector (both powered and unpowered) is often 1207
underreported, or even erratically omitted entirely, it is not uncommon for reported numbers to 1208
fluctuate widely from one year to another. Furthermore, it is a challenge to judge the objectivity of 1209
some countries in their reporting, due to their own potential political agendas, and unfortunately even 1210
external observers can have their own biases. A major source of information for the Soviet fishing fleet 1211
comes from the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or declassified CIA 1212
reports, but these will have a strong focus towards the largest aspects of the industrial fleet.
1213
Some key countries, particularly in South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, possess a vast 1214
inland fleet, which is often difficult to separate from the marine one (1) and might lead to inflated 1215
estimates. The separation of the fleet into the three sectors we analysed and our exclusive focus on 1216
marine fisheries reduced fluctuations in data but also restricted the availability of usable data. A 1217
careful balance and the understanding on the mechanism and scope of reporting was often necessary.
1218
For instance, countries practicing artisanal fishing transshipping to a ‘Mother’ boat (support vessel) 1219
introduced a challenge. Most boats (except the ‘Mother’ vessel itself) will be artisanal in their fishing 1220
operations, while their coordination with the support vessel can produce a large scale operation 1221
(Aiken, Andre Kong, Smikle, Mahon, & Appeldoorn, 1999). We made the choice to consider this 1222
association as artisanal by focusing on the individual vessels rather than the scale of the operation or 1223
the destination of the catch.
1224
In the pre-processing explanations, the term ’artisanal’ refers to its powered segment, and 1225
unpowered/unmotorized fleet to the ‘unpowered-artisanal’. Each process in Appendix 4 corresponds 1226
to a data source as given in Appendix 3. Additionally, the following processes were used for the 1227
definition of artisanal:
1228
- From data: no separation in artisanal, industrial or unpowered (artisanal) was required, as 1229
the data source detailed the number of vessels separately. Data given this way will always 1230
prevail over the country legal or institutional definition of what constitute an artisanal fishing 1231
vessel, as it will most likely be consistent throughout the years.
1232 1233
- Decision: whenever a legal definition of artisanal fisheries could not be applied, we used a 1234
‘similar’ country based on regional demographics (in parenthesis). This includes:
1235 1236
1237
Figure 4.1. Conceptual diagram of the processes used to separate the fishing vessel/engine power data into time series and interpolate/extrapolate.
1238 1239
• China and Taiwan. Both legal definitions are too stringent, leading to almost no industrial 1240
and almost no artisanal respectively. We used <10GT as definition instead, based on 1241
‘similar countries’ Korea and Japan.
1242
• Norway: No clear definition of artisanal fishing is given in the law, so we used the EU 1243
guidelines instead (<12m and no towed gears).
1244 1245
- Given by data: Using the legal definition for artisanal fisheries, the data was already directly 1246
disaggregated in such a way that didn’t require further processing (e.g. EU database, all 1247
vessels are categorized by length and gear so application of the EU definition of small-scale 1248
fisheries was straight forward). This was the case in regions where the cut off between sectors 1249
is given by technical specificities of the vessels (tonnage engine, gear, length) and the data 1250
given as such.
1251 1252