An institutional analysis of sasi laut in Maluku, Indonesia

The bulk of the fish are caught by large commercial vessels employing relatively few crew.
The workforce of the central Maluku fishery is numerically dominated by artisanal fisher-
farmers having low technology boats, fishing gears and limited formal education. The fishing
community is changing, as is the demography of Maluku. Younger fishers are increasingly
Muslim and increasingly focused on targeting deep-water pelagic resources. The local
management institution, sasi, has less credence with these younger, commercially oriented
fishers. However, younger fishers especially do tend to see the community as having
responsibility for management whereas the majority of fishers still view management as a
government affair.

Fish harvesters are moving from the artisanal to the small-scale sector, assisted by both
government and private sector development aid. They are also increasingly employed as
crew on commercial vessels. Both artisanal fishers and commercial crew earn marginal incomes
and have no control over fish prices in the marketplace. Fisheries earnings mostly accrue to
the owners of larger boats and gears, to fish brokers and to the factory owners. Profit sharing
systems that are operating provide incentives to fishers to maximize catch, if necessary through
use of destructive gears such as very fine mesh nets. It is important to keep all these factors
in mind while analyzing the functionality of current fisheries management systems. These
factors must also be recognized when attempting to design a model for future co-management
arrangements. The willingness and ability of fish harvesters to cooperate in, and comply
with, fisheries management depends largely on the daily realities of survival in the fishery
and its market place.

The Fisheries and Fish Markets of Central Maluku 57

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