Identification of fishing ground hotspot of traditional purse seine fisher at northern waters of Aceh – A community-based data collection approach

Abstract

Abstract Fishing grounds are among the most important key of information kept by the fishermen. Understanding the fishing ground locations are considered important as an evaluation of the fishing effort being reached by the fishermen as well as understanding the pressure being received to the fish stock at the surrounding water. The recent study has shown that a community-based data collection approach was found successful in recording and analyzing the fishing ground locations and its properties. One of the few projects implementing this concept is the Community-Based Bathymetric Survey (CBBS), which was realized by the Body of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (BRR) Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD) – Nias with funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). As many as 151 GPS-transducer recording devices were installed to the fishermen boats along the coast of Aceh, with 45 devices were installed to the traditional purse seine fisher at the northern water of Aceh. These devices were configured to automatically record locations each time the boat moved 30 m. Other important information, such as water depth, time, speed, and sea surface temperature (SST) were recorded as well. This study aims to examine the fishing ground and its fishing hotspot of the traditional purse seine fisher in the northern waters of Aceh. The data collection was performed between June 2007 and May 2009 and gathered as many as 922 data sets consist of 6,170,648 data points, from the 45 purse seine boats. Trough the data, we are able to identify the typical fishing activities of purse seiner and as many as 1,619 data points were being detected. The results indicate that there are five main regions of the fishing ground hotspot in the northern waters of Aceh, i.e. 1. Western offshore of Lhok Nga, 2. Northern offshore of Ulee Lheue, 3. Western offshore of Aceh Islands, 4. Eastern offshore of Aceh Island, and 5. Northern offshore of Krueng Raya. Among the fishing ground hotspot analyzed, the Western offshore of Lhok Nga is the highest density of fishing ground, while the lowest is at the northern offshore of Krueng Raya. These findings suggest that the western offshore of northern waters of Aceh are likely more fertile than its north- northeastern offshore.