It’s time to stop ignoring small-scale fishing in economic models

Illuminating Hidden Harvests: Exploring Sustainable Small-Scale Fishing for a Global View on Environmental, Economic, and Social Issues

These questions are important because they affect the welfare of nearly half a billion people whose livelihood depends on small-scale fishing. They are also hard questions because data on this huge, relatively invisible group are scattered and patchy. That is now changing, thanks to a research project called Illuminating Hidden Harvests, which has been running since 2017, collecting data on small-scale fisheries from 58 countries. This week, Nature is launching a website dedicated to synthesizing and disseminating the studies emerging from the initiative. This digital resource includes research already published, and we plan to add future findings to it.

Smaller scale fish farming is a type of fishing in which individuals, families, and small groups of people don’t have access to a lot of capital so they catch fish for their own food or sell it. Their health is key to several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And yet, relevant data are often missing, especially from economic statistics and from the models used to make policy decisions. Unless that changes, the marginalization of already-vulnerable people will only worsen, according to the project’s researchers.

We do not seek to dominate the seas. We would like to coexist. Small-scale fishing has a low ecological impact and is a model of sustainable fishing. This is a ‘blue economy’ that respects life.

I did not learn about these problems from books. I have lived them. canoes have been banned from the beach where they have historically been based. I’ve seen women excluded from fish processing sites. I have seen people leave the trade because they weren’t likely to make money. I’ve seen success stories like villages creating their own community fishing zones, women inventing innovative fish processing and young people developing applications for tracking fish sales.

Our future is in danger. Climate Change alters fish-migration routes and threatens fishing nets by changing the waves and tides, as well as plastic pollution invading our nets.

Women process and sell catch in the sector. There are no fish on the table without them. They are not visible in public policy.