Measuring seining strategies and fishing success in the Philippines

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

Deciding When, Where, and What Species to Pursue

In contrast to commercial trawler skippers who have navigational training and often are addressed elsewhere in the Philippines by the title of maestro (teacher) or kapitan (captain), seining skippers in this community are more informally acknowledged as katiwala ("manager" or "trusted one"). The role of skipper has evolved over the years from a previous 'foreman' or coordinator role in a largely subsistence form of production (e.g., Palsson and Durrenberger 1983) to one where he now receives a larger share of the boat's earnings in return for making the important decisions at sea in regard to catching and marketing the fish. Tagalog seining boats are not equipped with mechanized gear, fish-finding radar, safety equipment, or navigational aids of any sort. Nor are skippers subject to any formal training other than a form of "hands on" experience. Since the government classifies the boats operated by San Andres skippers as "municipal" (inshore) rather than "commercial" (offshore), they are not required to undertake formal navigational training. Both inshore seiners and offshore fishers, however, operate in a larger commercial economy. When seine boat owners get too old to captain their own boat, they generally prefer to pass this role on to one of their own sons in order to keep the money within the family. This practice does not necessarily mean that skippers are hired on principles other than skill, but simply that sons have greater opportunities if they are so inclined to learn the skills necessary for being successful skippers.

In Iceland, where public explanations of fishing success give prominence to the skipper's role, skippers have a great deal of authority relative to boat owners and are said to deny the owner of a boat any say in how the boat and gear are used (Bjarnason and Thorlindsson 1993:374). This type of "unquestioned" skipper authority is true for boat owners who are also skippers in San Andres, but not true for the sons of boat owners. Boat owners vary in terms of the degree to which they involve themselves in the decisions of their sons as to when the boat should go out fishing. Most boat owners are former skippers and many feel more knowledgeable about fishing than their sons or hired skippers. Also, not all boat owners are wealthy. While they all tend to have nicer houses than their crew members, many also have huge debts. If only a few boats are having success at catching fish at the beginning of the fishing season, some boat owners are reluctant to finance fishing trips until the chances of success improve.

In this sense, commercialized household fishing fleets may be quite different from industrialized fleets where the number of trips made during a fishing season is viewed as a simple outcome of differences in a skipper's motivation to work hard (Durrenberger and Pilsson 1983) or a skipper's skill at handling the boat in rough weather (Bjarnason and Thorlindsson 1993). The number of fishing trips taken by a Batangas seining boat partly reflects a boat owner's confidence in his own or his skipper's skill, and partly reflects his economic position and wealth. While almost all boat owners are able to borrow money from fish merchants for fuel, some are so deeply in debt that they are reluctant to borrow further money for fuel until more boats are catching fish.