Fleet sizes, fishing effort and the ‘hidden’ factors behind statistics: An anthropological study of small-scale fisheries in UK

The assessment of fishing effort is a vital part of fisheries management. However, assessing fishing effort by small-scale local fleets is often problematic, partly because of the complex socio-economic and cultural factors that govern the labour patterns of different fisheries employing different fishing practices. Often, official statistics produced by governmental agencies do not fully capture these factors, so a more holistic understanding of regional fisheries is required. Some contribution by social anthropologists is thus called for, in order to assess actual fishing effort and the trend of regional changes in fishing activities.