The Shadow Blue Economy: Optimizing non-target Catch of the Blue Swimming Crab Fisheries in North Coast of Central Java, Indonesia

Abstract

Blue Economy is the concept of sustainable use and management of resources, including small-scale blue swimming crab (BSC) fisheries. The coastal area of Pati District is one of the BSC landing bases on the north coast of Central Java (part of Indonesian Fisheries Management Area/IFMA 712). However, there has been no study of non-target composistion as a complement to exploratory analysis to better understand the complexity of the social-ecological systems in the BSC fisheries in this region. The purpose of this study is to identify of economically non-target species, Correlation between economically non-target with target species and trend of their proportions, optimizing non-target catch value during Covid-19 pandemic. The biological data was collected from the daily logbooks of BSC middleman, which included catches from 368 individual fishers from January 2019 - March 2021. The socio-economic data was obtained by structured interviews and group discussion. The analytical methods were used such as identification, correlation and trend analysis, and descriptive analysis. The economically non-target species found include Scylla serrata, Charybdis feriatus, squid and cuttlefish (cephalopods), Charybdis affinis, Podopthalmus vigil, Portunus sanguinolentus, and Babylonia spirata (mollusc). Significant correlation between BSC catches decreased, while the catch of Scylla serrata and Charybdis feriatus are increased. The trend of economically non-target BSC fisheries decreased for sale during the Covid-19 pandemic and shadow economic occurred with the changed of fishermen behaviour who were previously commercial fishers to be subsistence fishers. The other shadow blue economy also occurred since mud crab were frequently caught as the non-target species.