Small-scale fishers across the coastal waters of Maluku, Indonesia, are landing significantly smaller catches than in previous years – a decline that coincides with the development of El Niño conditions in the region and is already placing serious pressure on the livelihoods of traditional fishing communities.

Fisheries monitoring conducted between April and July 2026 by Blue Ventures’ partners Nusa Bahari Lestari, Moluccas Coastal Care, and Aksi Kelola Ekosistem, across coastal areas of Ambon and Seram Islands, recorded an average catch per fishing trip of just 3.6 kilograms. In the same period in 2024, that figure was 10.6 kilograms. In 2025, it was 8.3 kilograms. In two years, average catches have fallen by more than two thirds.

The data do not yet confirm that fish populations themselves are in decline. What the field observations do show is that worsening ocean conditions – including stronger waves, rougher seas, and more unpredictable currents – are preventing fishers from spending adequate time at sea and from reaching more distant fishing grounds.

The result is smaller landings, not necessarily smaller stocks. For the households that depend on those landings however, the distinction offers limited comfort.

The conditions align with a pattern identified by Indonesia’s Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics, which confirmed the development of El Niño conditions in mid-2026. The agency forecasts a longer and drier dry season than usual, with the strongest impacts expected between June and October across parts of Maluku and Papua in eastern Indonesia. 

Globally, a strengthening El Niño is now adding heat to an ocean already warming under decades of human-driven climate change with its effects arriving simultaneously on sea and land.

Asura Rumanama, Programme Coordinator at SAHARI, has been tracking the changes since March. The fishers she works with are contending not only with rougher seas but with unusually intense heat while working offshore. On land, the same extreme conditions have triggered bushfires across several areas. 

“We don’t yet know whether the extreme heat is affecting the sea and marine ecosystems, but it is certainly affecting our fishers,” she said.

The pressure on these communities extends beyond the water. Many fishing households supplement their income through farming, but the prolonged dry conditions have left fields parched and harvests reduced. With both fishing and farming becoming less productive simultaneously, families are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain their livelihoods. 

The twin squeeze – the pressures being faced on the sea and on the land – is a pattern being repeated across coastal communities throughout the Indo-Pacific as climate variability intensifies.

The findings underline the value of the long-term fisheries monitoring that organisations like SAHARI have been conducting in Maluku. Without baseline data stretching back across multiple years, the scale of the current decline would be difficult to measure and harder still to communicate to policymakers. 

That evidence base – catch per unit effort data collected consistently over time, in the same waters, by the same communities – is what allows a decline, one that might otherwise be invisible, to be clearly documented.

Further research is needed to establish the precise relationship between the developing El Niño conditions and the catch declines being recorded in Maluku. Designing adaptation strategies for small-scale fishers in a climate-disrupted ocean requires both the long-term data that monitoring programmes provide and the political will to act on what that data shows.

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