Traditional Practices for Resource Sharing in an Artisanal Fishery of a Sri Lankan Estuary

Abstract

In the Negombo estuary of Sri Lanka, there is an artisanal fishery for penaeid shrimp locally known as stake-seine fishery. Stake-seine nets, which can be fixed in specific sites close to the sea mouth, are used for catching shrimp that migrate from the estuary to the sea. According to regulations imposed by the fishing communities, use-rightss in the fishery are granted to descendants of certain fishing families in four villages. Among the stake-seine fishers who are organized into four rural societies, an effective mechanism has been evolved for resource sharing in the fishery over a period of several hundred years. For equity sharing of the resource, different fishing dates are assigned to the four rural societies, and fishing sites are allocated to individual fishers in each society using a lottery system. Sustenance of this traditional practice is due to the fact that the returns from the fishery are significant. Community-based management strategies for the fisheries in developing countries can therefore be defined by adopting relevant mechanisms found in these types of artisanal fisheries.