15,690 km2 marine area under improved fisheries management through the real-time monitoring of fishing activities and catch in Timor-Leste


Published on: May 1, 2021, Submitted by Cristiano Rossignoli on: April 30, 2021, Reporting year: 2020


Sustainable Development Goals Contribution


The PeskAAS digital fisheries monitoring system developed with and for the government of Timor-Leste to more effectively gather data on catch and distribution of fishing effort, has been officially launched and adopted by the Government. As such a marine area 15,690 km2 - representing the national fleet limited to small-scale vessels in territorial waters, is under improved fisheries management through the real-time monitoring of fishing activities and catch, which provides timely data for timely decision making.



WorldFish  developed the "Integrated data pipeline for small-scale fisheries"in Timor-Leste in response to a need for information. As is the case in a great many countries of the world, but especially in Asia where more than 80% of the small-scale fishing fleet is active, the government of Timor-Leste had only patchy understanding of how many boats were active in the country, where they were fishing and what they were catching. This was partly due to an historical prioritization of farming practices over fishing. However, fish was highlighted in the National Strategic Development Plan (2012-2030) as a critical resource in combating severe malnutrition in the country. Hence, decisions lacked any scientific or data-driven reasoning, and managers were in the dark about the fishery. 

WorldFish scientists worked alongside government fisheries officers to develop a digital catch reporting system that could gather fisheries landings information from remote sites around the country in near real time. Through an innovated partnership with Pelagic Data Systems, WorldFish also began to gather high resolution spatial information about the fishery and fishing behaviour, which could be combined with catch data to provide much more accurate measures of relative fish abundance in space and time. The initial extrapolated data from this system allowed for the first calculation of national fisheries production including small-scale fisheries. In 2019, the Government announced the launch of PeskAAS as the official national monitoring system of Timor-Leste.  PeskAAs puts important data in the hands of fisheries officers, researchers and local stakeholders. This will enable them to better understand the contribution of fish and fisheries to local livelihoods and food security.

Greater exploitation of small-scale fisheries in Timor-Leste will add increasing pressure that needs managing for sustainability—and this data system will be crucial in supporting that.His Excellency Vegard Kaale, Norwegian Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor-Leste

The dashboard highlights the food and income contributed by fisheries, and opportunities to develop the sector to sustainably enhance food security. We are committed to investing in this system and working with WorldFish to build the capacity of MAF staff to use and manage it. Acacio Guterres , Director General of Fisheries, at Timor-Leste’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF)

Timor-Leste now has one of the most sophisticated data collection systems for small-scale fisheries in the world, with 15,690 km2 of marine area under real -time monitoring. PeskAAs  has already highlighted previously-unknown fishing areas, patterns and productivity in Timor-Leste.

PeskAAS  the only system used for recording vessel activities and fish landings in the country. PeskAAS is used by the Government of Timor-Leste's Department of Fisheries to estimate national fisheries production from data collected at key landing sites in each of the 11 coastal districts. These data are used for reporting to UN-FAO and for developing specific fisheries management plans for high value species. Timor-Leste has an EEZ of 70,326 km2, however, currently the national fleet is limited to small-scale vessels in territorial waters (<12nm from the coast), representing an area of 15,690 km2. As such, this marine area is under improved fisheries management through the real-time monitoring of fishing activities and catch, which provides timely data for timely decision making. It has been particularly valuable through the COVID19 pandemic to visualise the effects of movement restrictions and market closures on food production and livelihoods in coastal areas.

Stage of Maturity and Sphere of influence

  • Stage of Maturity: Stage 2

  • Contributions in sphere of influence:
    3.1.2 - Enhanced conservation of habitats and resources.
    3.2.1 - More productive and equitable management of natural resources

Acknowledgement

This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH) led by WorldFish. This study was carried out under the Fisheries Sector Support Program funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Jakarta, and an Inspire Challenge 2018 Award from the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture (AT). 

Catch collection elements were designed in close collaboration with fisheries officers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Timor-Leste, in particular Pedro Rodrigues, Celestino da Cunha Barreto and Lucas Fernandes. The partnership with Pelagic Data Systems enabled the rapid scaling of the system to 500 vessel tracking devices, which relied on the hard work and resilience of the field team and data collectors led by Joctan Dos Reis Lopes. The data pipeline was coded by Shaun Wilkinson of Wilderlab.

Keywords

big data small-scale fisheries fisheries management

Countries

About the author

Alexander Tilley is at WorldFish - WF.