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Technical efficiency in the Malaysian gill net artisanal fishery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2003

Dale Squires
Affiliation:
Southwest Fisheries Science Center, 8604 La Jolla Shores Drive, La Jolla, California 92037, USA. Fax: 619–546–7003. Tel: 619–546–7113. E-mail: dsquires@ucsd.edu
R. Quentin Grafton
Affiliation:
Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, The Australian National University.
Mohammed Ferdous Alam
Affiliation:
ICLARM – The World Fish Center, Bangladesh.
Ishak Haji Omar
Affiliation:
Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Abstract

Artisanal fishing communities include some of the ‘poorest of the poor’. Using data from gill net fishers in Malaysia, the paper presents the first technical efficiency study of an artisanal fishery and finds that artisanal fishers are poor, but enjoy a high level of technical efficiency. If the relatively high levels of technical efficiency found in the Malaysian gill net fishery existed in other artisanal fisheries, it suggests that targeted development assistance that has traditionally been focussed on the harvesting sector may be better directed to other priorities in artisanal fishing communities.

Type
Theory and Applications
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The suggestions of three anonymous reviewers, the editor, Mohammad Alauddin, Boris Bravo-Ureta, Harry Campbell, Stephen Cunningham, Diane Dupont, Sam Herrick, Larry Jacobson, John Kurien, Doug Larson, and Richard Neal and discussions with Serge Garcia and Kamaruzaman Haji Salim are gratefully acknowledged. All errors remain the responsibility of the authors. The results are not necessarily those of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Grafton gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.