COVID-19 is continuing to have far-reaching impacts around the world, including on small-scale fishing communities. This study details the findings from 39 in-depth interviews with community members, community leaders, and fish traders in five communities in Kenya about their experiences since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020. The interviews were conducted by mobile phone between late August and early October 2020. In each community, people were impacted by curfews, rules about gathering, closed travel routes, and bans on certain activities. Fish trade and fisheries livelihoods were greatly disrupted. Respondents from all communities emphasized how COVID-19 had disrupted relationships between fishers, traders, and customers; changed market demand; and ultimately made fishing and fish trading livelihoods very difficult to sustain. While COVID-19 impacted different groups in the communities-i.e., fishers, female fish traders, and male fish traders-all experienced a loss of income and livelihoods, reduced cash flow, declining food security, and impacts on wellbeing. As such, although small-scale fisheries can act as a crucial safety net in times of stress, the extent of COVID-19 disruptions to alternative and informal livelihoods stemmed cash flow across communities, and meant that fishing was unable to fulfil a safety net function as it may have done during past disruptions. As the pandemic continues to unfold, ensuring that COVID-19 safe policies and protocols support continued fishing or diversification into other informal livelihoods, and that COVID-19 support reaches the most vulnerable, will be critical in safeguarding the wellbeing of families in these coastal communities.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a shock affecting all areas of the global food system. We tracked the impacts of COVID-19 and associated policy responses on the availability and price of aquatic foods and production inputs during 2020, using a high frequency longitudinal survey of 768 respondents in Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Myanmar, Nigeria. We found the following: (1) Aquatic food value chains were severely disrupted but most effects on the availability and accessibility of aquatic foods and production inputs were short-lived. (2) Impacts on demand for aquatic foods, production inputs, and labor have been longer lasting than impacts on their supply. (3) Retail prices of aquatic foods spiked briefly during March-May 2020 but trended down thereafter, whereas prices of production inputs rose. These trends suggest a deepening 'squeeze' on the financial viability of producers and other value chain actors. (4) Survey respondents adapted to the challenges of COVID-19 by reducing production costs, sourcing alternative inputs, diversifying business activities, leveraging social capital, borrowing, seeking alternative employment, and reducing food consumption. Many of these coping strategies are likely to undermine well-being and longer-term resilience, but we also find some evidence of proactive strategies with potential to strengthen business performance. Global production of aquatic food likely contracted significantly in 2020. The importance of aquatic food value chains in supporting livelihoods and food and nutrition security in Asia and Africa makes their revitalization essential in the context of COVID-19 recovery efforts. We outline immediate and longer-term policies and interventions to support this goal.