Measuring seining strategies and fishing success in the Philippines

Strategy 4 represents boats that fish relatively few periods compared to other boats, and also do not have very many trips per two week period. They fish the lowest diversity of locations, preferring to remain in the home bay of Batangas. They also tend to catch only frigate tuna, when they catch anything.

Table 3 illustrates the comparable performance of each strategy group. First, in terms of the percent of total catch of the fleet caught by each strategy group, Strategy I clearly produces the greatest overall productivity (47.4 percent). Yet Strategy 3 boats are also very successful and make a significantly larger percentage of trips outside Batangas Bay. Together, boats following these two strategies are not only significantly smaller than boats used by the rest of the fleet, but they caught 61.7 percent of the total fleet catch. These figures suggest that successful fishers may indeed pursue more than one strategy, either by following an opportunistic one in terms of the kinds of species sought (Strategy 1) or by intensively seeking the most common type of fish in this region (Strategy 3).

Second, Strategy 4 is also a specialized group of skippers insofar as they catch only frigate tuna, but different from Strategy 3 in that they made less than half the number of trips of boats in Strategy 3 and fished primarily in Batangas Bay. In short, Strategy 4 may represent less of a "strategy" as opposed to a supplementary form of income earning or the only strategy available to skippers with limited trip financing.

Third, the average number of crew clearly changes with each strategy group and effectively follows their rankings in terms of catch performance measures. This pattern substantiates our earlier argument (Russell and Alexander 1996) that the number of crew may well serve as a tracer variable of a skipper's skill (or, in this case, strategy) in this region. This pattern has been noted elsewhere as well, as crew members tend to seek employment with the most skilled captains owing to the practice of being paid a share of the catch (Acheson 1981).

While the number of crew per boat is strongly correlated with total catch, mean catch per trip, and the skill rank of a skipper, it is also moderately correlated with the number of different species caught and the number of trips per period (Table 4) [cf. Russell and Alexander 1996:Table 2]. We view this association as a function of the fact that 1) more highly skilled skippers are likely to go after and be successful at catching a larger range of species than less highly skilled skippers; and/or 2) boats with a larger number of crew are more capable of going after schools of fish that boats with a smaller number of crew would avoid. The larger number of crew will make an unsuccessful cast and haul less exhausting for everyone concerned, and hence may increase a skipper's motivation to cast the net on schools of a size or type of species that others may avoid or view as not worth the effort.

Table 4 illustrates the relationships among selected variables through correlation analysis. Fishing strategies reflect differences in skipper motivation and available financing, and wealth is a significant factor in explaining the number of trips that a boat makes in this particular fleet (cf. Russell and Alexander 1996:Table 3). To some degree, we can hypothesize that if wealth determines fishing effort, then one would expect wealth to be correlated with trips, periods fished, and bays per period. If skipper motivation is the key issue determining number of trips, periods, and fishing location, then one would expect that wealth is not correlated with these variables. Our data show that wealth is weakly correlated with bays per period, but moderately correlated with trips, trips per period and periods. Hence, wealth (e.g., the ability to afford fishing trips) strongly affects the actual number of trips and length of the season, and has somewhat less influence on where a boat fishes. This covariation mirrors the points made by Tagalog skippers, insofar as they view differential wealth as a factor which may limit the number of trips, especially at the beginning and end of the season, but is less influential in determining where a boat will fish.