Program

Southeast Asia region is the one of the most blessed fishery areas which have produced various kinds of fishery products and distributed them to the world-wide. South East Asia Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC), which was established in 1967 to promote sustainable fisheries in the Southeast Asia and is joined by the ten Southeast Asian countries and Japan as the member countries, has developed fisheries technologies and disseminated them to fisheries communities in this region. For those activities, SEAFDEC has introduced some international cooperation tools such as Japan Trust Fund (JTF). The activities by SEADEC with JTF mainly classify into four components: to enhance the capability for sustainable utilization of fisheries resources, to strengthen the promotion of sustainable fisheries, to promote sustainable aquaculture and enhance fishery resources and to promote sustainable development in inland fisheries. SEAFDEC, in addition, is encountering newly emerging technical issues in this region which SEAFDEC are internationally expected to deal with: further dissemination of measures for combating the IUU fishing after effectuation of the FAO Port State Measure Agreement, improvement of the appropriate management scheme of world-wide concerned fishery resources such as eels and sharks, research on fisheries affected by the climate change, rehabilitation of the critical habitat and fishing grounds and dissemination and development of post harvest methodologies, etc. Regarding the rehabilitation of the critical habitat and fishing grounds as one of newly emerging issues, the team of the Training Department of SEAFDEC is now conducting the project named “Promotion of sustainable fisheries resources enhancement measures in critical habitats/fishing grounds in Southeast Asia” This project, considered with the characteristics of the target sites, introduces the appropriate resource enhancement tools such as voluntary management rules/guidelines and facilities such as artificial reefs with capacity building of fishers and local management staff.

The Marine Fishery Resources Development and Management Department (MFRDMD) is the 4th department under the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center. Located on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, facing to the South China Sea, one of the richest marine ecosystem in the world. Marine resources especially fishes need proper conservation and management regimes in order to sustain their exploitation for food security. Therefore SEAFDEC/MFRDMD is responsible to provide management guidelines and recommendations to ASEAN Member States (AMS) through workshops, regional consultations, meetings and bilateral dialogues. Furthermore in many cases, especially for shared stocks, a single country fish resources management is unable to handle migratory stock effectively. MFRDMD as accorded by its mandate and mission will facilitate AMS in collaboration with other local and international organizations to minimise impact that threaten food security. With increasing number of population in this region, a greater challenge need to be addressed and will remain the ultimate focus for SEAFDEC/MFRDMD in future. Expansion of MFRDMD roles are inevitable especially when dealing with marine fishery resources development and management program.

Inland fishery is one of the important components of the economies in the Southeast Asian region and its contributions in rural communities are particularly important in poverty alleviation, creating employment, food security, livelihoods, nutritional and societal well-being. Considering the importance of inland fisheries, the SEAFDEC (consists of 10 ASEAN member states (AMS and Japan) established a regional center for inland fisheries. IFRDMD was established to serve as a centre for providing guidelines for the proper development and management of inland fishery resources of AMS, which could consist of freshwater, saline water and mixture of both, and distributed throughout the land such as rivers, lakes, floodplains, reservoirs, wetlands, estuaries, and inland saline systems. The role of the department includes contributing to sustainable management of important commercial species under international concerns within Southeast Asian region. The SEAFDEC/IFRDMD collaborated closely with the Indonesian research institute for inland fisheries (RIFF). The institute provide financial support for management and operations department, supplying human resources, access to a variety of multidisciplinary laboratory facilities and earmarking of corresponding research.
Under the support of the Japanese Government through the trust fund (JTF) thrust 1, developing and promoting responsible fisheries for poverty alleviation and food security, IFRDMD carries out research program on promotion of responsible utilization of inland fisheries in Southeast Asia for improved management of inland fisheries in the region. IFRDMD emphasized the need to undertake two areas of activities, which are improvement of data collection, and enhancement of governance through the application of ecosystem approach to fisheries and co-management.

With the five technical departments, the activities undertaken by SEAFDEC cover all aspects of fisheries from capture fisheries (both marine and inland), aquaculture, post-harvest practices, food quality and safety, as well as development of regional fisheries policy to support the Southeast Asian Countries. SEAFDEC also undertakes activities to explore marine fishery resources through the conduct of oceanographic and fishery resources surveys either in the EEZs of the SEAFDEC member Countries, or transboundary waters, and waters outside the EEZs by two research vessels. With regards to capacity building activities, there are several training courses that could be extended to ASEAN countries, either in the aspects of capture fisheries or aquaculture with a view of enhancing sustainable contribution from the fisheries sector to food security in the region. Increasing demand of fish from capture fisheries and aquaculture at global level as well as in the Southeast Asian region, it is necessary that the fisheries industry should be developed in sustainable and responsible manner to reduce the gap between the supply and demand of fish in the future for our food security.
In response to global warming and minimizing the use of fossil fuel by fishing activities, SEAFDEC initiated a regional program on optimizing energy use for fishing vessels with a specific objective of transferring knowledge and enhancing the awareness of key stakeholders on the need to optimize energy use. Other initiatives had been undertaken by SEAFDEC through regional collaborative mechanism such as R&D on utilize alternative protein sources for aqua-feeds to enable the aquaculture industry to get out from the fishmeal, minimize pressure on fishery resources that might have already been depleted due to overfishing capacity, and combating IUU fishing. SEAFDEC will celebrate its 50th Anniversary in November 2017, while SEAFDEC envisioned the Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Towards 2030.

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is one major threats to sustainable fisheries development in Southeast Asian region, resulting in destruction of habitats, over-exploitation of resources as well as decrease of income to fishers and countries’ GDP. While national initiatives in combating IUU fishing had been undertaken by the respective countries, SEAFDEC as inter-governmental organizations working towards sustainable fisheries development in the ASEAN region also undertook regional initiatives aiming to build the existing national initiatives and enhance cooperation among countries toward combating IUU fishing. Such initiatives include the development of ASEAN Guidelines for Preventing the Entry of Products from IUU Fishing into the Supply Chain, establishment of Regional Fishing Vessels Record (RFVR) for fishing vessels 24-meter in length and over, improvement of traceability for marine capture fisheries through development of electronic system of ASEAN Catch Documentation Scheme (e-ACDS), and develop regional collaboration to support implementation of Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA). The process formulation of these initiatives was undertaken with the considerations given to the region’s specificity, e.g. small-scale nature of fisheries, capacity and disparities of countries in the region, availability/requirement for supportive legal and institutional frameworks, and high-level support for the implementation of relevant activities. In addition to strengthen cooperation from relevant national agencies among ASEAN Member States (AMSs), the Joint ASEAN-SEAFDEC Declaration on Regional Cooperation in Sustainable Fisheries Development Towards the ASEAN Economic Community: Combating IUU Fishing and Enhancing the Competitiveness of ASEAN Fish and Fishery Products was adopted in 2016. The adopted declaration is expected an ability to enhance effectiveness on fisheries management at national and regional levels against IUU fishing as well as support development of Common Fisheries Policy for ASEAN in future.

The Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) is an autonomous intergovernmental organization established in 1967 to promote sustainable fisheries development in Southeast Asia. The Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC/AQD) is one of the Technical Departments of SEAFDEC established in 1973 to undertake research and develop aquaculture technologies appropriate for the region, develop skilled manpower through capacity building programs, and disseminate information for sustainable aquaculture development. SEAFDEC/AQD’s R&D programs cover 5 thematic areas: production of quality seeds, promotion of healthy and wholesome aquaculture practices (including aspects of feed development, feeding management, fish health management and food safety), maintaining environmental integrity, adaptation to climate change impacts and addressing socio-economic issues in the promotion of sustainable aquaculture for inclusive development. We work on commodities that are of economic importance in the region: marine fish and freshwater species, crustaceans, mollusks, seaweeds, species for stock enhancement and natural food organisms that are important in aquaculture operations following the multidisciplinary approach that includes breeding and seed production, farming systems and ecology, nutrition and feed development, fish health management and socio-economics of technology adoption. To fulfill our mandates on information dissemination, we produce information materials and organize training programs and provide technical assistance to aquaculture projects/ventures of other government agencies, local government units, the academe or people’s organizations through our institutional capacity development for sustainable aquaculture (ICDSA) program or the private sector through the agree-built-operate-transfer (ABOT) Aqua-Negosyo Program which offers an array of aquaculture business packages. SEAFDEC/AQD adheres to and promotes the principles of sustainable aquaculture development, responsible use of resources, environmental integrity and food safety.

Fisheries, particularly small-scale fisheries in ASEAN countries is an important source for food security, nutrition and livelihood for people. However, high fishing pressure and other impacts have caused a decline of fisheries resources. It causes a concern over the future sustainability of the fisheries resources. A solution is to seek a way to improve fisheries practices with fisheries ecolabeling following the FAO guideline, the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) and the FAO Guideline for Ecolabelling of Fish and Fisheries Products from Marine/Inland Fisheries. Nevertheless, in the past decades the fisheries ecolabeling has been established mostly in developed countries, only a few or not at all in ASEAN countries. There is a number of issues behind non-existence of the fisheries certification in ASEAN countries. This study focuses on legal frameworks of these countries. The national fisheries legislation play very important function to enforce fisheries management. This paper reviews the existing national fisheries legislation, such as fisheries law, fisheries act, decree, directive, rules and regulation of ASEAN countries in relation to the requirement of the fisheries certification standards. The review reveals that the ASEAN fisheries legal framework provides a fairly strong base for the ASEAN fisheries to meet the requirement of the fisheries certification standards. In this regard, it is also recommended that the monitoring, control and surveillance of the fisheries (MCS) and other relevant aspects should also be considered and strengthened to ensure sustainability of fisheries through the fisheries certification arrangement.