In recent decades, there have been considerable efforts to enhance, diversify, or implement alternative livelihood activities in marginalized coastal communities, to ease reliance on deteriorating coastal resources, reduce poverty and improve well-being outcomes. To date, gender has been notably absent from the literature on small-scale fisheries and associated livelihood improvement programs, despite increasing evidence of the importance of gender equality and women’s empowerment in achieving such outcomes in other contexts. In this paper, drawing from an evaluation of the effectiveness of 20 livelihood development projects implemented in coastal communities in Indonesia since 1998, we report on how gender was considered in these projects. We assessed whether and how gender was included in project rationales, and how men and women were included in project activities. We found that, despite the women being reached by many project activities, particularly efforts to increase women’s productive capacity through training and group-based livelihoods enterprises, 40% of the projects had no discernible gender approach and only two of the 20 projects (10%) applied a gender transformative approach that sought to challenge local gender norms and gender relations and empower women beneficiaries. Our assessment suggests the need for greater understanding of the role of gender in reducing poverty and increasing well-being outcomes in coastal communities. Lessons from comparable agricultural settings suggest that this may be facilitated by locally situated gender social relations analysis, integration of gender throughout livelihood improvement project cycles, gendered capacity building activities and shared learning from the evaluation of the gendered outcomes of project activities.

A methodology had been proposed for cross-matching visible infrared imaging radiometer suite (VIIRS) boat detections (VBD) with vessel monitoring system (VMS) tracks. The process involves predicting the probable location of VMS vessels at the time of each VIIRS data collection with an orbital model. Thirty-two months of Indonesian VMS data was segmented into fishing and transit activity types and then cross-matched with the VBD record. If a VBD record is found within 700 m and 5 s of the predicted location, it is marked as a match. The cross-matching indicates that 96% of the matches occur while the vessel is fishing. Small pelagic purse seiners account for 27% of the matches. Other gear types with high match rates include hand line tuna, squid dip net, squid jigging, and large pelagic purse seiners. Low match rates were found for gillnet, trawlers, and long line tuna. There is an indication that VMS vessels using submersible lights can be identified based on consistently low average radiances and match rates under 45%. Overall, VBD numbers exceed VMS vessel numbers in Indonesia by a nine to one ratio, indicating that VIIRS detects large numbers of fishing boats under the 30 Gross Tonnage (GT) level set for the VMS requirement. The cross-matching could be used to identify “dark” vessels that lack automatic identification system (AIS) or VMS.

Tuna fisheries are the most valuable fisheries in the world, with an estimated market value of at least US$42 billion in 2018. Indonesia plays an important role in the global tuna fisheries and has committed to improve its fisheries management; therefore, a pilot of long-term spatial-temporal data bases was developed in 2012, however none have utilized data to have better understanding for management improvement. In this study, the annual and seasonal variation of large (≥10 kg) Yellowfin Tuna (YFT) catch per unit effort (CPUE) have been investigated and the influence of sea surface temperature (SST) and chlorophyll-a on these variables examined. We used fish landing data from West Nusa Tenggara recorded every month between 2012 and 2017 and analyzed using generalized linear models and generalized additive models. We found a seasonal and annual pattern of tuna abundance affected by SST and chlorophyll-a (chl a) and related to upwelling and El Nino event. These results also suggest that a two-month closure to fishing in August and September in southern Lombok is worth considering by the Government to maximize conservation of stocks due to a high abundance of juveniles emerging during the upwelling months from June to August.