Measures for a sustainable lobster fishery

Abstract

Lobsters; the crustaceans have four varieties as spiny, slipper, clawed and coral reeflobsters. Althoughall the species have a biological and environmental importance only two varieties; spiny and slipperlobsters have acqu ired the market and attribute for the fishery. Lobster fishery is a paramount componentwhich contributes more than five percent foreign exchange from total fish earnings in Sri Lanka. Thishas an export oriented market with attractive high prices, around 2000 LKRkg-J. The fishery hasexplained as a capture fishery. Therefore, the resource is subjected to over exploitation due tounattainable demand. That means, the fishery is currently in a period of transition era of open accessto a period oflimited access. In fact, it needs a well managed, monitoring plan and functioning rulesand regulations towards a sustainable lobster fishery that would be discussed through this study.

The data were collected from five lobster process-ing companies and three purchasing centers inGampaha district. Informal discussions were held with officers at NARA and ministry of fisheries.The sustainability was calculated using surplus yield model (Schaefer, 1954 - 1957)_

During 1980s to early 1990s, the only lobster variety exported was spiny lobsters: but with the absenceof enough spiny lobster stock, marketers and buyers tend to demand 51ippcr lobster also, Therefore,the catch also declined up to mid 1990s and slightly increased in a decreasing manner where the catchdrop from 375 mt in 1996 to 247 mt in 2004 with slight variation during the period. So as the Catch PerUnit Effort (CPUE) also decreased from 0.33 percent to 0.09 percent during the period of 1986 -1998. The decreasing is mainly due to the over exploitation. Therefore, new remedies, rules andregulations should be implemented.

Habitat enhancement, minimize near shore pollution, usage of appropriate gears. conduct larvalsettlement and lobster fattening programmes, and facilitate training, extension work cum awarenessprogrammes are some suggestions that could be implemented. Also the primary regulations on lobsterfishery should be implemented with restrictions on the fishing efforts (traps) and a quota system. Thecalculated yield levels permit to harvest only within the range of359 mt - 388 mt annually.