History and status of the San Miguel Bay fisheries

Abstract

This paper reviews the available data on San Miguel Bay fisheries and their history, and contrasts "small-scale" and "trawl" fisheries, each of which land about half of the Bay's total catch of 15000 t / year. On the basis of historical trawl data, it is shown that the trawlable biomass in the Bay declined in the period from 1947 to 1980/81 to less than 20% of its original value, while total effort by the motorized fleet increased by more than 150 times from 120 horsepower in 1936 to the present value of 18800 hp. The catch data and other relevant information are reviewed by taxonomic group and by gear type. The available evidence suggests that the Bay is overfished in the sense that an increase in effort by either the trawl or the small-scale fishery would not result in an increased catch from the San Miguel Bay fisheries as a whole, but rather exacerbate the present allocation problems between the small-scale and trawl fisheries.