Comprehensive Integration of Fisheries Management Policies for Rebuilding Fisheries in South Korea

Abstract

The aim of present study is to provide the real scenarios of rebuilding fishery stocks which depleted mainly due to an excess fishing pressure during the last 40 years. Despite the efforts of traditional fisheries management policies against unlawful fishing, unwanted trends were observed with marine fisheries resources. Based on the more than ten years’ experience, FSRP in Korea has proven to be helpful for governing fishery resources for next generations. In 10 years, the fisheries stock rebuilding plan increased revenue earning by 4184.77 million USD. From a social perspective, fisheries enhancement has brought a better livelihood for increasing income in a consistent manner. In South Korea, government agencies implement fisheries policy in accordance with organization’s goals. As a policy, only fisheries stock rebuilding plan (FSRP) or seasonal fishing closure is not enough to recover depleted fish stocks at the desired level. This study evaluated the effectiveness of integrated management in fisheries production. Thus, FSRP and seasonal fishing closure policies were considered for five commercial species i.e. sand fish, blue crab/swimming crab, octopus, skate/ray, and yellow croaker. Again, during FSRP, tokobushi abalone, cod, file fish, Korean flounder and purplish Washington clam were taken from year-round open fishery to make a fruitful summery for designing an effective management plan to restore aquatic resources. Results show that, with FSRP, seasonal closure is really a potential strategy to give strength to vulnerable stocks. Here, blue crab and yellow croaker dominated in production in the seasonally closed fishery, whereas, Korean flounder and cod in the year-round open fishery. Since the beginning of FSRP with seasonal fishing closure, trends in stocks recovery was started to be positive. Even though, stock recovery was found higher within first five years than ten years of FSRP with either seasonal closure or year-round open fishery. Based on CPUE, blue crab showed positive and significant correlation with yellow croaker and skate/ray within the seasonally closed fishery. Whereas, only cod showed a significant negative correlation with tokobushi abalone and purplish Washington clam in the year-round open fishery. This indicates that seasonal fishing closure influenced nicely to rebuild marine stocks in a viable way, however, policy makers also need to revise the existing components of the FSRP policy every five years by doing ecological research concerning marine environment to make a sustainable recovery of marine stock biomass. In addition, fisheries stock rebuilding plans (FSRP) have been moving with some threats of dwelling unavoidable challenges in main policy to achieve rapid effective breakthrough. Therefore, systematic research on the biology of species, mixed catches effects, pollution management and net income loss recovery by stabilizing market for fishermen will be helpful to carryout Korean permanent fisheries rebuilding in the future. At the bottom line, cooperative fisheries resources management by adjacent nations may be a benchmark for rebuilding marine resources not only within EEZ but also between neighboring states.