Artisanal Fishing and Environmental Conservation in Southeast Asian Seas

Fishing Is one of the few activities left in which people harvest what they have not sown an anachronistic leftover from the times of hunters-gatherers. The transition from hunting and gathering to farming on land took place several thousand years .a90 in most cultures; with fisheries this transition is only now beginning to take place on a large scale, and may be completed only well into the next century, when aquaculture (the aquatic counterpart of farming) will have supplanted fishing (the aquatic counterpart of hunting) as a major source of fish for human consumption. That this transition is beginning to happen now tlas two sim. pie causes. Industrialized fishing operations reached their limit in the seventies, when worldwide catches ceased to increase as rapidly as before, in spite'of increasing fleet capacities. In addition to this, more people need more of the relatively cheap pr~tein that fish provide, particularly in the tropics. -