Measuring seining strategies and fishing success in the Philippines

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

This "delaying" strategy is most apparent at the beginning and end of the fishing season, since boat owners who refuse to fund fishing trips until late in the season risk alienating skippers and crew. Skippers in turn find it difficult to attract crew members if their boat owners are perceived as lacking confidence in their abilities or too poor to support a full-time fishing operation. Few hired skippers will stay with a boat owner under these conditions. Finally, boat owners who are in debt to fish merchants cannot wait too long before initiating a fullscale season of fishing, since fish merchants will become angry if the delay continues once other boats are catching fish. Aside from the cases where boat owners may delay the inception of the season, boat owners generally allow their skippers to decide where to fish or what species to pursue. In addition, skippers and boat owners in small neighborhood and kinship-based groups often exchange ideas about what species other boats are catching and where they are catching them. Information about which boats have caught fish and where they have caught them on the previous day is well known to everyone in this small coastal town.

Seining in this area is an opportunistic, multi-species venture, but November to June is the primary season for tuna and mackerel. Besides deciding where to fish, a key decision skippers face revolves around what size school of fish or species of fish to set the net on once they are spotted.4 Schools of fish may be considered too small or moving so erratically that skippers will ignore them. Some species also are considered more difficult to catch than others, with frigate tuna considered to be one of the easier species to catch and skipjack one of the more difficult. A skipper who has not caught anything during a trip often will cast the net on even a very small school so as to acquire enough fish to give the crew food for their day's efforts. A large sized school of fish, regardless of the species, generally will spark an all out effort if the skipper thinks the school is moving in a predictable fashion and that he can position the boat effectively.

During the season for pukot seining, fishing boats ply the waters of Batangas Bay and nearby coastal areas looking for schools of fish. The skipper generally stands on a raised platform in the front of the boat, scanning the surface of the sea. Boats typically set out around 4 or 4:30 a.m. for the fishing grounds around the mouth of Batangas Bay, as just after dawn is considered the premier time for fish to come to the surface. Skippers guide the boat and set the desired speed through hand signals to crew members. Once a school is spotted, the boat tracks the school at a faster speed in an attempt to parallel the movements of the fish. If the skipper determines that the currents and the movements of the school are favorable for a cast, he gives a signal for the boat to pick up speed. He also is in charge of signaling when the crew should drop the net into the water. It is not unusual for seining skippers to recognize another boat that has spotted a school of fish owing to the greater speed suddenly exhibited. If the boat is not too far away, some skippers will move in to try and make a cast on a school that slips through the net of the first boat. These occasions sometimes lead to arguments between skippers, but generally trying to snag a school of fish that has escaped the cast made by the original spotter is expected and acceptable behavior among skippers (Russell 1996).