Climate Variation
Fishing is subject to climatic variability which can cause heavy wind and high waves that inhibit fishers from going to sea. Fishers who we interviewed noted that several days of bad whether and no fishing would put some serious strain on their livelihoods. At no other time has this situation rendered more hardship to the fishers of Ranong and Krabi provinces, than after the Tsunami. They referred to this as the “incident that robbed them of their livelihoods.” Some of the observations made by fishers about changes in the fisheries and the marine ecosystem since the Tsunami were the decline of shrimp fisheries due to water turbidity, destruction of seagrass beds leading to low production of shellfish, and alteration of water channels, making it impossible to apply local knowledge for navigation and net setting.