User:Benyami
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MENAKHEM BEN-YAMI, Dr h.c. Menakhem Ben-Yami, mainly self-taught fishing technologist and fishery ecologist, is a free-lance international fisheries development and management adviser and writer on fisheries matters.
Following a naval service in Israel, in 1950 he started his career as a fisherman, then a fishing and naval skipper. He fished, commercially and experimentally, and conducted fishing surveys in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, the Central Atlantic Ocean, lakes and lagoons, using trawls, purse and beach seines, light-attraction, hooks and gillnets. In 1956, when still a trawling skipper, he presented his innovative design of a Mediterranean trawlnet on the First FAO World Fishing Gear Congress in Hamburg.
From 1960 to 1963, M. Ben-Yami worked as a Masterfisheman and Fisheries Adviser in Eritrea, where he organised fishermen’s loan fund – a credit scheme based on mutual guaranty groups. This scheme, financed by World Bank through the Ethiopian Development Bank, involved consolidation of fishermen’s debts to processors. This enabled local fishing dhows’ owners an access to free market, motorization of their craft and acquisition of synthetic nets. In 1963, he returned to Israel to assume the position of Chief of Israel’s Fisheries Technology Unit and, later, Director of the Fisheries Technology Division, of the Dept. of Fisheries, Min. of Agriculture.
In 1966, while on a fellowship in the USA, at the Southwest Fishery Center at LaJolla, CA, he developed and model tested a fast-sinking tuna (“hybrid”) purse seine. His design was then successfully tested by the Center in full-scale sea trials, and had a significant influence on the future California tuna purse seines, facilitating their use also for fishing skipjack on high seas. The results of this work were then presented at the 1971 Second FAO World Fishing Gear Congress in Reykjavik.
During that period, on the request of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, he successfully demonstrated fishing with light off Ivory Coast, and translated Russian fisheries-related literature into English. In 1975 he joined FAO where he worked for 7 years based at its HQ in Rome, as Fishery Industry Officer at the Fisheries Technology Service. His fields of responsibilities involved fishing technology, and development of small-scale fisheries and fishing communities. During that period he visited and advised governments on fisheries, and initiated, supervised, and evaluated projects and programmes in many African, Central American and South American countries, as well as in Sri Lanka, India, Burma, Thailand, and many oceanic island nations.
Since his early retirement from both the FAO (1982) and the Israeli Dept. of Fisheries (1985), M.Ben-Yami has carried out numerous missions to developing countries as consultant to FAO, IFAD, UNDP, GTZ, the Commonwealth of Nations, and IDRC, associated with development of small-scale fisheries, credit schemes, and allocation of fishery resources between small and larger scale fishery sectors. He has travelled widely to visit fisheries also in many countries of Europe and both Americas.
During the years, he was called for consultations and meetings participation by the U.S. Academy of Science, Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, the Smithsonian Institution, the Canadian Government’s Fisheries and Oceans, the Yale University Center for Middle East Studies, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Institute of Fisheries and Marine Technology, was a keynote speaker and presented papers on several international meetings, delivered many occasional lectures at universities and research institutes in Israel, USA, Russia, and Poland, and was giving courses in marine ecology at the Galilee College (Israel).
Member, International Advisory Committee, International Fishing Industry Safety & Health Conference (IFISH-I) Woods Hole, Massachusetts, 2000 and Second International Fishing Industry Safety & Health Conference (IFISH-II) Sitka, Alaska, 2003.
During 2000-2006 M. Ben-Yami travelled to visit and advise fisheries in Australia, Florida, (for the 3rd time) Ecuador (Galapagos), North Ireland, and the Faroe Islands. In 2004 he was a member of an FAO Review Panel peer-reviewing evaluation of the performance of the FAO Fishery Industries Division during the last 6 years, and was invited to present a lecture on the International Conferences “Fisheries Management: Fisheries Management Systems: Does the practice follow the theory?” in the Faroe Islands and “The Economic Effect of Climate Change on Fisheries”.
M. Ben-Yami authored several FAO Fishing Manuals dealing with fishing with light, small-scale trawling and purse seining, FADs, tuna fishing with pole and line, and of FAO and IFAD manuals on development in fishing communities, co-operatives and other fisherfolk’s organisations and credit schemes in developing countries, and a Russian-English Glossary of Fishing and Related Marine Terms. He published numerous papers and articles on various subjects of fishing technology and ecology, and fisheries development and management, and translated for the U.S. Natl. Research Council and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries several Russian books and numerous papers in fisheries and marine science*).
He also designed and edited the PC-FISHELP - a computer expert program in fishing technology and vessel economics. In 1995 he prepared FAO Fisheries Department’s two regional papers on Sustainable Contribution of Fisheries for the Kyoto Conference on Food Security. In the 1990s his series on the world’s tuna fisheries was published in INFOFISH International, and in 2000-2003 he published several articles in SAMUDRA Report.
Since 1999 M. Ben-Yami prepared major working papers for ILO (Safety of small-scale fishing people - a world review), for FAO (Socio-cultural aspects of food security – East Nigeria case study) and for the Faroes’ fishing associations (Observations on the Faroese fisheries management). His and A.Gelman’s English-Russian/Russian-English Dictionary of Fishing and Related Marine Terms was published by EASTFISH in December, 2001. For the last 13 years he has been writing a personal page in the "World Fishing" magazine and active on the FISHFOLK Internet discussion list.
In the present century he has been deeply involved in the campaign against major industrial polluters of the Kishon River and the Kishon Fishing Harbour (Israel) on behalf of fishing people whose health has been affected by toxic pollution. He’s a member of the Board of Directors of the Coalition for Public Health, N.Israel
In 1996, following the publication by FAO and Fishing News Books of his "Purse Seining Manual", the Kaliningrad State Technical University awarded M.Ben-Yami “the scientific title of Doctor Honoris Causa for substantial contribution to development of fisheries science and to training of specialists”.
- ) - list of publications available on request. Many of his articles and essays can be read and downloaded from www.benyami.org
