UC San Diego

At least half of the world's food fish supply comes from small-scale fisheries. In many island countries, almost everyone relies on small-scale fisheries as a source of protein, income, livelihood, and cultural tradition. Here, we investigate the changes in the actual production of small-scale fisheries across 48 tropical islands over a period of 10 years and examine socioeconomic factors as possible reasons for changes in fisheries production over time. Our results indicate that the majority of the countries with overexploited fisheries status had increased in production contradicting the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) theory, which state that an overexploited fisheries will over time be collapsed. Many case studies have found relationships between socioeconomic factors and the change in small-scale fisheries production; here, we apply these factors on a worldwide scale. We found no correlation among fisheries production and variables such as population growth, economic growth and governance performance. Even though there is some similarity across small-scale fisheries in different locations, the relationships between humans and fisheries are complex and need to be evaluated locally. The second chapter, a case study, reaffirms that small- scale fisheries can't be generalized and thus need to be study in regionally, as investigations using broad overview of small scale fisheries usually misses very important factors that affects small -scale fisheries production