Marine sub-sector
The marine fisheries are classified into small-scale fisheries and commercial fisheries. The commercial fisheries use inboard-powered boats of over 5 gross tonnage, generally deploy efficient fishing gears and have the capacity to fish offshore and spend several days at sea in one fishing trip. The typical fishing gears employed are medium- to large-size trawls, purse seines, encircling gillnets and large drift nets. The small-scale fisheries use boats that are less than 5 gross tonnage and are either non-powered, or have outboard or inboard engines. Most small-scale fishermen live at or close to subsistence level. They operate near shore and use traditional fishing gears. The typical fishing gears are small trawls, gillnets, push nets, lift nets, set bag nets, traps, hook-and-line and other stationary gears that operate in estuaries, bays and inshore waters. A census survey of marine fisheries carried out in 2000 established the total number of fishing boats to 58 119 of which 80 percent were small-scale.