MABUL ISLAND FIP
YELLOWFIN TUNA FIP IN MABUL ISLAND, SEMPORNA, SABAH
This Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) aims to facilitate the sustainable fishery management for yellowfin tuna – the target catch of the indigenous Bajau Suluk community from Mabul island, Semporna. The artisanal fishers from the island travel to the southern part of Semporna (at least an hour of boat ride) where they use the traditional fishing method of handline to catch the tunas in the deep sea area.
For decades, these fishers rely on the yellowfin tuna fishery as their source of food and income, where they significantly contribute to the major landings of yellowfin tuna in Malaysia. The declining catch rate within the past 5 years due to the increasing number of fishers in Semporna and number of boats (including the commercial vessels) threaten the communities’ income.
While there are also no bycatch mitigation measures in place and awareness to maintain the catch quality (they lack storage for their catches on the boat) have also deteriorated the balance of the marine ecosystem and driven these fishers to catch more in order to suffice their income. Hence, after multiple coordination meetings with our stakeholders and roundtable discussions, an action plan is developed to address these problems with an objective to ensure the sustainability of the yellowfin tuna fishery.
The FIP project improves fishery sustainability via three key principles: sustainable fish stocks, minimum environmental impacts, and effective fishery management. The FIP progress is monitored and tracked using the Benchmarking Monitoring Tool (BMT). The BMT shows the progress and status of each FIP principle, all FIP components (under the 3 FIP principles) and the overall scoring trendline.
Overall, 8 components from the 3 principles have fully passed in green (maintenance needed) or passed with conditions in yellow (some improvements needed), while 3 components in red have not yet met the FIP requirements. Hence, more improvement activities and strategies are needed for better scoring.
As of 2022, the yellowfin tuna FIP scored 0.59 out of 1 for BMT scoring. It is expected that in 2023, this FIP will achieve 0.70 scoring, showing 70% improvement for the fishery.
