By Dr. Nazia Sher
Pakistan’s fisheries sector sits at the intersection of law, livelihood and export ambition, yet the architecture that is meant to govern it remains strikingly fragmented. What emerges is not a single system of management but a layered accumulation of statutes, institutions and port authorities that operate in parallel rather than in coordination. The result is a governance structure that is extensive on paper but disjointed in practice, particularly at the point where it matters most: the landing of fish and its journey into formal markets.
At its foundation lies a patchwork of legal instruments. Inland waters are governed under the West Pakistan Fisheries Ordinance 1961, while marine waters fall under the Exclusive Fisheries Zone (Regulation of Fishing) Act 1975. Provincial frameworks such as the Sindh Fisheries Ordinance 1980 sit alongside environmental safeguards embedded in the Sindh Environmental Protection Act 2014. Each of these laws was designed with a specific jurisdictional purpose, reflecting a time when sectoral governance was sufficient to manage isolated parts of the resource chain.
Yet fisheries today are not a series of isolated domains. They are a continuous economic and ecological system stretching from catch to landing, processing, certification and export. In Pakistan, that continuity breaks almost immediately after the catch is made. Port operations are governed separately through the Karachi Port Trust Act 1886 under the Karachi Port Trust, the Port Qasim Authority Act 1973 under the Port Qasim Authority, and the Gwadar Port Authority Act 2002. These bodies are primarily designed for trade facilitation and logistics rather than fisheries compliance. The landing site, globally recognised as the most critical enforcement node in fisheries governance, is therefore treated not as a regulatory checkpoint but as a commercial throughput point.
This institutional separation has produced a structural blind spot. Fisheries authorities regulate extraction, environmental bodies monitor pollution, and port institutions facilitate trade, but no single entity is responsible for ensuring that what is caught at sea is systematically tracked as it enters land-based supply chains. In effect, the system regulates fragments of the value chain without governing the chain itself.
International practice shows how different this model could be. In the European Union, the Common Fisheries Policy enforces strict landing obligations, requiring full documentation of catch at port entry and linking it directly to quota systems. Norway operates a highly integrated system of real-time catch reporting combined with port inspections, allowing enforcement to begin at sea and continue seamlessly on land. Japan treats fisheries ports as biosecure regulatory environments where traceability, hygiene standards and compliance checks are embedded into landing operations rather than deferred to export documentation. In all three cases, the harbour is not a passive infrastructure node but an active regulatory instrument.
Pakistan, by contrast, still relies on a system where enforcement is often retrospective. The introduction of Vessel Monitoring Systems across parts of Sindh and Balochistan represents a significant step toward modern surveillance, but the data generated remains only partially connected to port-level verification. The absence of integration between offshore monitoring and onshore landing inspections creates a gap through which regulatory certainty is weakened. Catch data can be recorded at sea, yet its validation upon landing is inconsistent and often manually processed.
Pakistan’s membership in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission further underscores this tension. The commission requires robust monitoring, control and surveillance mechanisms, including catch documentation systems and vessel tracking for tuna and related species. While formal compliance exists, operational alignment remains uneven because institutional responsibilities are divided across federal and provincial lines, and digital integration is still limited.
Recent policy developments, including the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy 2025–2035, signal ambition to modernise the sector through aquaculture expansion, export enhancement and climate resilience. Provinces have introduced initiatives such as aquaculture zones, shrimp farming promotion and improved vessel registration. Yet these measures largely function as administrative improvements rather than structural redesign. They refine existing processes without fundamentally rethinking how governance flows through the system.
The deeper issue lies in constitutional and administrative fragmentation following the 18th Amendment. Inland fisheries became a provincial responsibility, marine fisheries and the exclusive economic zone remained federal, and ports continued under separate federal authorities with trade-oriented mandates. This produced parallel governance tracks that rarely intersect in a meaningful operational sense. What was lost in the transition was not authority itself, but coherence. What Pakistan faces, therefore, is not a deficit of regulation but a deficit of integration. The legal instruments exist, the institutions are established, and international commitments are formally acknowledged.
Yet the absence of coordination between these elements prevents the emergence of a functioning governance ecosystem. A more coherent model would require reimagining harbours not as neutral logistical spaces but as regulatory interfaces. Landing sites would need to function as legally defined compliance nodes where catch documentation, inspection and digital verification converge. Vessel monitoring systems would need to be directly linked to port-based enforcement tools. Most importantly, a unified digital traceability framework would have to follow seafood from capture through processing to export certification.
(The writer is a research associate at the National Institute of Maritime Affairs (NIMA), Pakistan. She focuses on fisheries maritime governance and policy, and blue economy development in Indian Ocean. She can be reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
