Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture: A Synergy for Sustainable Food Fish Production

Inland capture fisheries and aquaculture have a number of divergent as well as overlapping relationships. In general, fishers are hunter/gatherers and socio-culturally quite distinct from fish farmers. The essential components of these cultures influence the way they view their respective environments and its resources. Institutionally, fisheries output is often controlled by managing the fishers, directly (via numbers of fishers, size of boats, etc.) and/or indirectly (via total permissible catch, etc), while aquaculture output is likely to be controlled by managing the aquatic environment. Within this concept, an important difference between inland capture fisheries and aquaculture is the question of ownership, official or customary. Aquaculture involves an acceptance of ownership of products and often, production facilities, while capture fisheries exploit common property. Typically, capture fisheries utilize open access resources in which the only human intervention is the harvesting of wild fish stocks. Aquaculture, on the other hand, involves systems where the grower exerts control over both the cultured organism and the culturing environment. Cutting across the disciplines of capture fisheries and aquaculture are practices known as culture-based and enhanced fisheries.