By Michael Byrnes, Reuters
Sydney—Southeast Asia's oceans
are fast running out of fish, putting the livelihoods of up to 100 million
people at risk and increasing the need for governments to support the
maintenance of fish stocks, an Australian expert said.
Fisheries in the region had
expanded dramatically in recent decades and Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and
the Philippines were now in the top 12 fish producing countries in the world,
Meryl Williams said in a paper for Australia's Lowy Institute.
"As the fourth largest
country in world fish production, Indonesia is a fisheries giant. Yet ...
Indonesian marine fisheries resources are close to fully exploited and a
significant number in all areas are over-exploited," she said.
Williams, a former director
general of the international WorldFish Center, said the number of fishers was
still increasing in most Southeast Asian countries despite a trend since the
1980s to close frontiers due to territorial claims and overfishing.
In the Gulf of Thailand, the
density of fish had declined by 86 percent from 1961 to 1991, while between
1966 and 1994 the catch per hour in the Gulf by trawlers fell more than
sevenfold.
In Vietnam, a new fishing power
and a rising source of imports by Australia, the total catch between 1981 and
1999 only doubled despite a tripling of capacity of the fishing fleet—a sure
sign that fishing was reaching capacity, she said.
In the Gulf of Tonkin, where
Vietnam shares resources with China, the record was even worse with fish catch
per hour in 1997 only a quarter of that in 1985.
