In May, I carried out a full itinerary of travels and meetings throughout Indonesia. At the beginning of the month, May 8-9th there was a BSC Fishery Management Planning meeting in Lampung hosted by the local fisheries office. The workshop was attended by most members of the provincial and national team and other stakeholders. The workshop aimed to raise awareness on sustainable BSC fishery management, detail characteristics of the BSC fishery in the east coast of Lampung, and develop a five-year fishery management goal with yearly targets and work plan.
The workshop was opened by Vice Head of Provincial Marine and Fisheries Office, Dr. Noorman, who pledged to support a joint sustainability effort with existing provincial fisheries programs. The meeting consisted of sessions run by Starling Resources, the Environmental Defense Fund and other stakeholders with discussion centering around how to best represent the various interests of the fishing community, industry public sector (university and NGO), and the government.
May 10th, I met with the Quarantine and Health Agency (BKIPM). BKIPM is responsible for issuing health certificates for products intended for export. Our discussion centered on adding compliance with the Control Document System as a necessary requirement in receiving an export health certificate. By mandating the Control Document’s sustainable sourcing requirements as a requisite for sending crab products to foreign markets, the Control Document System would gain further leverage as a sustainability tool and provide added incentive for processors to exercise responsible management within their supply chains.
On May 16th, I participated in a national discussion on the recently conducted assessment of Indonesia’s marine resources. The meeting was hosted by the Indonesian National Commission for Fish Resources Assessment and included a presentation of 2016 Indonesian fisheries stock assessments. The species assessed included: small pelagics, demersal, large pelagics, reef fishes, blue swimming crab, mangrove crabs, lobster, shrimp and squid. The stock assessment applied one or more of the following approaches: acoustic survey, surplus production and fishery biological survey.
The blue swimming crab assessments suggest improvements to the previous assessment (2015) results, especially in the four main BSC fishing areas of the Java Sea, Madura, South-Southeast Sulawesi and Malacca Strait. APRI plans to further collaborate with the Commission to discuss the BSC stock assessment (including SPR approach) and progress made in BSC fisheries management.
As part of the NFI Crab Council’s inquiry into stock enhancements’ role in fishery management, I visited a hatchery facility in Semarang that is the joint effort of the of Hasanuddin in Makassar and Diponegoro. I learned about the processes and techniques behind crab hatcheries, such as providing the ideal habitat for growth with proper vegetation and water salinity.
Stock density of the BSC was one crab per m2 of pond with a survival rate reaching 76%. The hatchery stock is fed dead or cut fish and pellets with 4 months needed to reach a harvest size of 10cm carapace width.
