Capacity Building Project for Fish Collectors

Hello everyone,

I am a designer working on environmental and social sustainability projects in developing countries. There is a shift towards sustainable production and consumption in many sectors. For example, specialty coffee got popular as an alternative to commodity coffee due to its quality and fairness to the farmers. Unfortunately, such innovations in supply chains haven't happened much in the marine ornamental trade. The livestock collectors in developing countries are underpaid and the working conditions are pretty problematic. Many risk their lives everyday, as there are not safety regulations. In addition to that consumer in the Western countries are very detached from the reality of the collectors. Thus, we are not able to make very conscious decisions when buying a new coral or fish.

The project I am working on at the moment aims to build a community centre for the fish collectors in the Island of Bangaii, where they can discuss issues related to their profession, can collectively share equipments, get training from experts on safety and handling of the livestock. Eventually, our aim is to add tanks for collectors to safely stock their fish and design a system for captive breeding of Bangaii Cardinalfish. Transition from wild-catching to mariculture or aquaculture is vital for the collectors as everyday more and more reefs are dying. Captive breeding would also help improve the working conditions of the collectors, help them get more income for their work.

I wanted to start this tread to hear your opinions about our project as fellow reefers. How much are you aware of the working conditions of the collectors? What do you think needs to be done to raise awareness? Do you think us consumers are too detached from the reality of these communities? Also, would it be possible to design a product that would help collectors breed bangaii cardinals in small-scale?

 

UPDATE: 16.04.2016

We had a meeting with one of our partners in Indonesia; Yayasan Alam Indonesia Lestari (LINI) aka Indonesia Nature Foundation. They are one of the only non-profit organisations in Indonesia with a social and environmental sustainability focus to marine ornamental trade. They have an Aquaculture and Training Centre in Bali where they give training to the local communities and also do research on breeding species for the aquarium trade.

Their activities are very important as they also give training to the local communities how to handle the caught fish/corals, how to ship them and so on. Thus, they help us get healthier animals. At the moment they have a captive breeding program for bangaii cardinals and recently they shipped 400 cb bangaiis to UK. One of their biggest challenges is that they don't have much connection with the consumers. Thus, their captive bred bangaiis are sold to exporters where they get mixed up with wild-caught ones.

Based on the LINI Aquaculture and Training Centre, we decided to design a similar but much smaller model that is cost-effective and scaleable. LINI Aquaculture and Training Centre has a great impact on the sustainability issues of our hobby. However, at the moment it is located only in Bali and it would be very expensive to replicate the same model. We want to research and design a new model that;
- meets the needs of the local collector communities (quarantine, holding tanks, shared equipments, etc.)
- becomes a platform where they can exchange ideas and find collective solutions to their problems
- becomes a community training centre (through local NGOs and universities)
- becomes an aquaculture research centre (shift towards captive bred)

As Indonesia and many other countries where aquarium fish are collected consist of thousands of small islands, it is necessary to design a low-cost and scalable model. Aquaculture is of course our ultimate goal but initially we aim to create an empowering space within every community based on knowledge sharing.

 

Some photos from the LINI Training and Aquaculture Centre in Bali:

 

We should do this for our chicken farmers as well. Our consumers are too far from the egg.

 

There are already a lot of initiatives that are connecting consumers with smallholder poultry farmers because they are against exploitation of labor and animals in the corporate industry that are making millions by selling eggs full of chemicals.

If you are in USA or Europe, you can easily find an organisation that can connect you with a smallholder poultry farmer or provide you a transparent supply of organic eggs that are raised ethically by smallholder farmers.

 

I will post all updates under this thread, however you can also follow us on Facebook to receive news about the sustainability issues of marine aquarium industry.
https://www.facebook.com/fairreef/

 

Following this thread on here and will checkout the Facebook page too.

Thanks for sharing