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Catch per Fisher

Source: R/employment_summary.R
catch_per_fisher.Rd

This function divides the catch of a country by its number of fishers, by year: the marine catch (FAO marine areas) by the marine fishers (coastal, deep-sea and marine not specified), the inland catch by the inland fishers, and the whole catch by all fishers, from the FAO capture and employment statistics (load_fao_data() and load_fao_employment()). FAO reports production per fisher by region in The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (FAO 2012, table 9) and in its studies of fisher numbers (FAO 1999); Scherrer et al. (2024) followed marine catch per fisher worldwide since 1950.

Usage

catch_per_fisher(
  country_name,
  weights = c("headcount", "fte"),
  data = NULL,
  employment = NULL,
  plot = TRUE,
  table = TRUE,
  lang = NULL,
  pptx = getOption("faofishingreport.pptx", FALSE),
  plot_show = fao_setting("plot_show"),
  label = NULL,
  data_version = "latest"
)

Arguments

country_name

One or more countries, as named in the FAO data (e.g. "Norway").

weights

"headcount" (default) counts fishers as people; "fte" as full-time equivalents.

data

Catch data in the format of load_fao_data(). Default is NULL, which loads load_fao_data(data_version).

employment

Employment data from load_fao_employment(). Default is NULL, which loads it.

plot

A logical value. If TRUE (default), charts are saved in figures/png/summary/.

table

A logical value. If TRUE (default), tables are saved in tables/.

lang

The language of the chart text and names: "en" (English), "zh" (Chinese) or "both" (Chinese and English). Default is NULL, which uses the language set with fao_settings() ("en" unless changed).

pptx

A logical value. If TRUE, charts are also saved as editable PowerPoint files in figures/pptx/summary/. Default is FALSE, which can be changed for all functions with fao_settings(pptx = TRUE).

plot_show

A logical value. If TRUE, each chart is also drawn in the plot window (e.g. the Plots pane of RStudio) as it is saved, to look at it at once. Default is FALSE, which can be changed for all functions with fao_settings(plot_show = TRUE). The charts are saved as files (plot = TRUE) either way.

label

The name used in the output file names. Default is the country, or "selected_countries" for several countries.

data_version

The FAO data release of the catch data; see load_fao_data(). Default is "latest".

Value

Invisibly, a list with yearly (one row per country and year: marine and inland catch, marine, inland and all fishers, catch per fisher of each, the number of fishers as people, fish farmers, workers of unspecified work area and their share of all workers, the share of fishers in estimated values or with unknown working time, and whether the number of fishers is unchanged from the year before; NA in the years in which the country reported no catch or no workers) and notes (FAO's notes on the countries). The chart <label>_catch_per_fisher.png is saved in figures/png/summary/ and the table <label>_catch_per_fisher.csv in tables/.

Counting fishers

FAO counts people, not full-time equivalents: an occasional fisher counts as one, like a full-time fisher. With weights = "fte", fishers are counted as full-time equivalents with the weights of Scherrer et al. (2024; code on Zenodo): part time 60/95, occasional 15/95, and full time and unknown working time 1. These are the middle of the CWP ranges of working time (30 to 90 percent, below 30 percent) relative to the middle of the full-time range (90 to 100 percent). Where working time is unknown, as for many countries, the two counts are equal.

People whose work area is not specified are not counted as fishers: they can be fishers or fish farmers (in China, the part-time and occasional workers of both; FAO country note), so catch per fisher is too high where many are unspecified. unspecified_pct gives their share of all workers. Fish farmers are not counted.

Reading the results

  • Catch is recorded by the flag of the vessel and fishers as the crews of national vessels (CWP handbook), but some countries leave out foreign crews (e.g. Norway; FAO country note), and the catch of distant-water fleets can come with few national fishers.

  • The marine and inland split follows each country's reporting; for example, FAO notes that China's marine fishers not specified include inland fishers in 1995-2006 and 2014-2020, so use the catch per fisher of all fishing for China.

  • Estimated values (by FAO or the country) are common (fishers_estimated_pct), and FAO's are often carried forward unchanged (FAO 2024, table T.39): fishers_unchanged marks years with the same number of fishers as the year before.

  • Surveys can find more or fewer fishers than FAO statistics (FAO, Duke University and WorldFish 2023, Annex B).

References

Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics (CWP). Handbook of Fishery Statistics: fishers. https://www.fao.org/cwp-on-fishery-statistics/handbook/capture-fisheries-statistics/fishers/en/

FAO (1999). Numbers of fishers 1970-1996. FAO Fisheries Circular 929, Revision 1. Rome: FAO. https://www.fao.org/3/x1168t/x1168t.pdf

FAO (2012). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012. Rome: FAO. https://www.fao.org/4/i2727e/i2727e.pdf

FAO (2024). Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics - Yearbook 2021. Rome: FAO. doi:10.4060/cc9523en

FAO, Duke University and WorldFish (2023). Illuminating Hidden Harvests: the contributions of small-scale fisheries to sustainable development. Rome: FAO. doi:10.4060/cc4576en

Scherrer, K.J.N., Rousseau, Y., Teh, L.C.L., Sumaila, U.R. and Galbraith, E.D. (2024). Diminishing returns on labour in the global marine food system. Nature Sustainability 7: 45-52. doi:10.1038/s41893-023-01249-8 . Code: doi:10.5281/zenodo.7215108

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
employment <- load_fao_employment()
catch_per_fisher(c("Norway", "Iceland", "Peru", "Indonesia"), employment = employment)
catch_per_fisher("India", weights = "fte", employment = employment, lang = "zh")
} # }