Village-level Nearshore Fish Landings for Kolono and Kolono Timur Districts of Southeast Sulawesi
Description
This dataset contains (1) landings data for small-scale fishers (1GT or less boats or fish fence operators) in a nearshore fishery in Southeast Sulawesi, namely 9 villages in Kolono Bay, Kabupaten Konawe Selatan) and (2) a pdf map of the study area and fishing grounds grouped into geographical sectors. The dataset was generated during a Fulbright Student Research grant funded project. It was conducted as a demonstration project of how coral fisheries data can be collected on an ecosystem-scale (eg: all the villages hugging a bay, all the villages on an island). Sulawesi is a reef and nearshore fish biodiversity hotspot. Yet the state of local catch and fish stock information is considered data-poor. The provincial government gathers weekly data for 3GT+ boats that fish 1km+ offshore but it does not record catch of operators of the 1GT or less boats or beach-based fish fences, which contributes to regional fish consumption and market and restaurant sales. Data collection for this dataset ran from November 2019 to March 2020, a time stretch matching the annual western monsoon. Each month, catch was recorded for 72 fishing trips across the 9 villages. Villages were grouped into 6 survey areas as four of the villages had few active fishers and so were grouped into a single survey area. Catch was sampled twice a month: once in the week around the full moon and once during one of the three other weeks a month that local fishers distinguish as “dark moon” periods with different fishery productivity. Each sample period, catch was recorded for 12 fishing trips in a survey area: 4 samples for each of the three main local area gear types – net, handline and fish fence. Fish landings were recorded using local names, identified to lowest possible taxon (species and occasionally genus) as shown in the Fish of Southeast Sulawesi guide that author Melati Kaye published with others. They compiled the book using a method that combined photograph identification and verification against FishBase database (www.fishbase.org). With consideration to fishers’ privacy, fisher names are cloaked in this dataset. Their fishing grounds are grouped into geographical sectors whose coordinates are stored in the shared data table and pdf map.