By Janette Bulkan and John Palmer
During their first few months of life, young fish are called ‘fry’; most do not survive to adulthood. The idiom, ‘small fry’, has been used to refer to children and people of low status since the 14th century in England and is perhaps derived from the ‘fry’ of fish. Artisanal fishers in Guyana are treated as ‘small fry’, of little consequence to the institutions that should be concerned with their welfare.
The Fisheries Department’s last published guesstimate was that about 12,000 people were directly engaged in fishing. The Marine Fisheries Management Plan, 2013-2020 noted that the ‘data collection programme for artisanal fishers covers only a small proportion of landings; it is constrained by i) lack of resources (transport) and ii) waste of resources due to lack of local knowledge (data collectors frequently visit sites where no landings are due)’. The Ministry of Labour does not publish counts of fishermen, fish processors and small-scale fish vendors. Workers in these sectors are likely lumped into the informal economy – lacking even the minimal representation provided by unions, associations and government institutions.
