Fig. 1: Alternative criteria for small-scale fisheries.
The proportion of marine small-scale fisheries catch that would be included depends heavily on which attribute is used to define ‘small-scale’. For each country, we applied each criterion independently to the characterized fishery units and calculated the share of total characterized catch that meets that definition alone. This highlights how unidimensional definitions can underestimate or exclude fisheries that are operationally small-scale. For example, in Argentina and Kenya, some small vessels operate like industrial fleets, whereas in Bangladesh, larger cooperative-managed vessels contribute substantially to local nutrition. Total percentages of characterized catch varied by country (23–100%; see Supplementary Table 3).
