How did we come up with the Recommended Guidelines?
How did we come up with the Recommended Guidelines for fishing in Singapore? That’s one question that many of you have asked us!
Above: Mr Bhai and Myka demonstrating measuring of fish lengths, Fishing For the Future event, January 2020
The beginning
In March 2019, we wondered why there wasn’t any fisheries management in Singapore. We met with marine biology researchers in Singapore and asked, "Will fisheries management help the health of our marine ecosystem?" The answer was - yes!
Fisheries management has been proven to improve overall marine ecology and marine health, which in turn benefits the users of marine resources including fishermen.
First community meeting
With that, we organised a community session in April 2019 with fishing charter captains, tackle shop and tackle brand owners, surfcast team leaders and passionate anglers. We discussed how we could regulate ourselves as a community, that would benefit all of us in the longer term.
Above: First community meeting at Singapore Sustainability Academy, April 2019
A range of fisheries management techniques were considered, such as open and closed seasons, minimum and maximum fish sizes, bag limits, no-take and all-take species etc