Sustainable Management of Bycatch in Latin America and Caribbean Trawl Fisheries (REBYC-II LAC)

Legal framework of the Shrimp Trawl Fishing in Brazil

Brazilian fisheries legislation, despite its complex tangle of obsolete and anacronic rules, consolidates in its development policies international guidelines and recommendations, with principles that aim to assure the sustainability of national fisheries, balancing the environmental, economic and social aspects of fishing activities.

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Meeting with fishers to evaluate the BRDs,
in the context of the EPPA Management Plan

The responsibility for the institutional management of the fisheries sector in Brazil, including the legal authority to establish rules, standards and measures for the sustainable use of fisheries resources, is shared between the environmental Ministry and the Government institution responsible for promoting and developing the activity, presently the Secretary of Aquaculture and Fisheries. To that effect, a joint management system was created, with a view to promote the need of an ecosystem approach, reinforcing the importance of scientific knowledge in decision-making, and adopting the precautionary principle where technical and scientific data are lacking or insufficient. This system prescribes the existence of participatory forums, composed of all the main actors involved in the fishing activity, making them an active part of the decision-making process.

In reality, however, this shared management system has proven to be quite inefficient, compromising the whole participatory decision-making process. The lack of information, continued research and statistics from marine and continental fishing, as well as the need for modernizing instruments and tools for information collection, record-keeping, monitoring and control in a continuous, uninterrupted manner, has made it impossible to adequately manage Brazilian fisheries, in all its dimensions.

The legal framework for the shrimp trawl fishing presents an universe of diverse legal statutes, several of them obsolete and dating from the 80s, divided by areas of concentration, specifically the East, Northeast and Southwest/South coast. Some of the main rules for shrimp trawling in the country are:

(i) the mandatory use of turtle escaping devices - TED, for vessels greater than 11 m in length, with mechanized fishing net retrieval mechanisms;

(ii) the mandatory use of VMS, linked to the National Program of Satellite Tracking of Fishing Vessels (PREPS), for vessels larger than 50 AB or greater than 15 m in length;

(iii) filling and delivering specific logsheets for vessels larger than 10 AB, or for the whole shrimp trawling fleet, as required.

Some of the main specific measures in force are:

(i) annual closures;

(ii) fleet limitations;

(iii) minimum catch sizes;

(iv) minimum mesh size of fishing nets; and

(v) areas where trawling is forbidden, both at high sea and at estuaries and lagoons.

The shrimp trawl fishing regulations in Brazil, however, still lacks rules that take the ecosystem approach more clearly into account, with the necessary balance between the environmental, human and social well-beings, within improved governing frameworks.

 

Written by Ana Silvia C. Silvino, Expert on Environmental Law and Water Resources/ Fishing Law Consultant

07/05/2018
Brazil