November 27, 2013 — The amount of fish caught by small-scale fisheries using traps called weirs may be six times higher than officially reported in the Persian Gulf, suggest estimates made using images from Google Earth.
"We should realize what's being reported to the UN is likely an underestimate. That has implications for fisheries management," said Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak, a Ph.D. student with the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre in a phone interview Tuesday about the results of the study she led.
Al-Abdulrazzak, who is currently working on ocean governance with the United Nations in New York, added that more effort needs to be made to improve the quality of fishing statistics. She said that is especially true in the case of small-scale fisheries that often go underreported because governments think studying them isn't worth the trouble.
"Nobody actually thinks they have a large impact, but they do."
She added that weir fishing can be particularly damaging to marine ecosystems because it tends to scoop up juvenile fish from their nursery grounds in shallow waters, long before they have a chance to spawn.
Al-Abdulrazzak grew up in Kuwait, where she often saw weirs in shallow, intertidal waters along the coasts.
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