Measuring seining strategies and fishing success in the Philippines

Human Organization, Summer 1998 by Russell, Susan D, Alexander, Rani T

Coastal Seining in San Andres

The coastal community of San Andres, Batangas, is home to roughly 4,000 people, mostly members of the Tagalog ethnolinguistic group of south central Luzon. Different kinds of fishing characterize this community, but the most important is pukot, or baby purse seining. In this community, there are roughly 50 canoe owners, 62 owners of baby purse seiners, 1 owner of a lift net outfit, and around 500-600 crew members who work on the seining boats. Some canoe owners join the crews of seining boats during the peak season, and otherwise fish on their own during the off season.

Prior to World War II, seine fishing was conducted from non-motorized boats of 15-20 meters in length with two outriggers. Spoehr (1980:28) suggests that the round haul seine was probably a Tagalog innovation that spread into the Visayan islands of the central Philippines by the 1920s or 1930s, and early forms of seine fishing in Batangas were of this type. Crews were composed of 15-25 men and boats were powered by large sails. Large crews were required in order to haul the seine net and to row the oars attached to each outrigger. The seine nets were of two types: large ones (500 m. long by 30 m. wide) for tuna fishing, and smaller nets (350 m. long by 50 m. wide) with closer mesh for other kinds of schooling fish. By the 1960s, most boat owners adopted purse seine nets and 225 horsepower inboard diesel engines but retained their double outriggers in the converted vessels. Otherwise, the only significant changes were a reduction in the number of crew needed to put to sea and an expanded share for the owner of the boat and fishing gear (Russell 1994). The fleet expanded to its present size in the late 1980s, following several years of excellent prices for fish.

These characteristics of the local fishing economy have changed little today. The primary difference is that crew members are more difficult to recruit locally owing to other job opportunities in urban areas nearby. The core crew of many boats today is constituted around relatives of the boat owner, with an average of 13-14 crew per boat during the peak fishing season. Slightly over half of the 59 seining boats active during 1991-92 in San Andres were captained either by the owner or his son.2

For most fishing households in this community, fishing is the primary form of income and a very important source of protein. All crew members receive a small share of fish for consumption whenever there is a catch, with the owner retaining the right to sell the remaining catch to local fish buyers. Boat owners decide on their own whether to pay their crew in cash shares or in fish for their labor on the boat, but roughly 75 percent of all fish caught are sold though the market.

Seine fishing in this area can be characterized as petty commodity fishing - a form of household-based enterprise ownership operating in a market economy (Russell and Poopetch 1990; Russell and Alexander 1996). Almost all boats are owned and operated by households, with both related and unrelated crew hired to enhance household labor resources. The ability to pool household labor and income is one factor which enables petty commodity producers to compete against more heavily capitalized firms, since they can adjust their costs rapidly to cope with fluctuations in prices, wages, and output (Smith 1986).3 While most boat owners are in debt to financiers who also market the bulk of their fish, boats and gear are locally owned and only two boat owners live outside the community. The ownership of a boat and a house distinguish boat owners from most crew members, but otherwise the joint experience of making a living from the sea tends to mute the overt expression of different class identities locally (Russell 1997).