The general thrust of the first part of this chapter has been to call attention to a variety of lagoon fishery management problems and to present a number of regulatory and non-regulatory fishery management options as possible solutions to these problems.
With regard to various forms of regulatory management, it has been seen that for a number of socio-economic and political reasons, and because of technical and financial constraints, “comprehensive” and stringent regulation of the coastal lagoon and estuarine fisheries of most developing countries is not possible at this time. However, management through the regulation or elimination of the most destructive fishing practices is within the financial, administrative, and technical reach of many countries. Revitalization and reinforcement of traditional fishery management practices appears to offer an attractive means to supplement or complement fishery regulation by central government intervention.
Attention was also drawn to non-regulatory lagoon and estuarine fishery management techniques which were directly or indirectly aimed at increasing biological production and fishery yield through various kinds of biological manipulations -- predator control, artifical spawning areas, hydraulic management, and brush-park fisheries. Among the most potent of these techniques would appear to be hydraulic management for fisheries; however, wide acceptance and utilization of the techniques available will depend on local/national economic situations and the extent to which hydraulic management for fisheries can be shown to incorporate benefits for other users of lagoons and adjacent terrestrial environments. The brush-park fisheries method also holds out good possibilities for enhancing the management of lagoon and estuarine fisheries. In addition to the advantage of high yield relative to open-water capture fisheries, brush-park fisheries are labour intensive and do not carry the threat of unemployment or underemployment which could be caused by adoption of more sophisticated aquaculture techniques. Further, brush parks do not represent a radical technological departure from capture fishing in terms of construction and operation as do some forms of aquaculture. Thus, a gradual change-over of some parts of lagoons and estuaries to brush-park fisheries would be more akin to the step-by-step process of technological change advocated by Lawson (1977) than would be the introduction of other fish culture techniques requiring higher-level technological training backed up by readily available technical assistance through extension services and applied research facilities which may financially strain developing countries.
The intent in the second portion of the chapter -- conflicts and interactions -- was to bring to light two basic ideas. The first is that management of fisheries such as exist in lagoons and estuaries of many developing countries depends as much, or more so, on an understanding of the socio-economic ramifications of the fisheries as it does on biological knowledge of the resources and capture characteristics of the fishery. In short, too often the fishery manager with a biological background observes and treats the symptoms (overfishing, destructive fishing practices) while the “disease” is really imbeded in the socio-economic framework of the local fishing community or in the national economy.
The second basic idea is that lagoon and estuarine capture fisheries cannot be managed as single or isolated entities, but rather are biologically and economically integrated with marine nearshore and offshore fisheries, with rapidly developing aquaculture, and to some extent with freshwater riverine fisheries. In this situation, too, management is not only a matter of biology and population dynamics, but also a matter of national economic and sociological development objectives and priorities.
