Mekong - The Fisheries

The Fisheries

Aquatic biodiversity in the Mekong river system is the second highest in the world after the Amazon. The Mekong boasts the most concentrated biodiversity per hectare of any river.

The commercially valuable fish species in the Mekong are generally divided between ‘black fish’, which inhabit low oxygen, slow moving, shallow waters, and ‘white fish’, which inhabit well oxygenated, fast moving, deeper waters. People living within the Mekong river system generate many other sources of food and income from what are often termed ‘other aquatic animals’ (OAAs) such as freshwater crabs, shrimp, snakes, turtles, and frogs.

OAAs account for about 20 percent of the total Mekong catch. When fisheries are discussed, catches are typically divided between the wild capture fishery (i.e. fish and other aquatic animals caught in their natural habitat), and aquaculture (fish reared under controlled conditions). Wild capture fisheries play the most important role in supporting livelihoods. Wild capture fisheries are largely open access fisheries, which poor rural people can access for food and income.

Broadly, there are three types of fish habitats in the Mekong: i) the river, comprising all the main tributaries, rivers in the major flood zone and the Tonle Sap, which altogether yield about 30 percent of wild catch landings; ii) rainfed wetlands outside the river-floodplain zone, comprising mainly rice paddy in formerly forested areas and usually inundated to about 50 cm and yielding about 66 percent of wild catch landings; and iii) large water bodies outside the flood zone, including canals and reservoirs yielding about 4 percent of wild catch landings.

The Mekong Basin has one of the world’s largest and most productive inland fisheries. An estimated 2 million tonnes of fish are landed a year, in addition to almost 500,000 tonnes of other aquatic animals. Aquaculture yields about 2 million tonnes of fish a year.

Hence, the Lower Mekong Basin yields about 4.5 million tonnes of fish and aquatic products annually. The total economic value of the fishery is between USD 3.9 to USD 7 billion a year. Wild capture fisheries alone have been valued at USD 2 billion a year. This value increases considerably when the multiplier effect is included, but estimates vary widely.

An estimated 2.56 million tonnes of inland fish and other aquatic animals are consumed in the lower Mekong every year. Aquatic resources make up between 47 percent and 80 percent of animal protein in rural diets for people who live in the Lower Mekong Basin. Fish are the cheapest source of animal protein in the region and any decline in the fishery is likely to significantly impact nutrition, especially among the poor. The size of this impact has not been established

It is estimated that 40 million rural people, more than two-thirds of the rural population in the Lower Mekong Basin, are engaged in the wild capture fishery. Fisheries contribute significantly to a diversified livelihood strategy for many people, particularly the poor, who are highly dependent on the river and its resources for their livelihoods.

They provide a principal form of income for a large number of people and act as a safety net and coping strategy in times of poor agricultural harvests or other difficulties. In Lao PDR alone, 71 percent of rural households (2.9 million people) rely on fisheries for either subsistence or additional cash income. Around the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, more than 1.2 million people live in fishing communes and depend almost entirely on fishing for their livelihoods.