A Better Understanding of Fishery Cooperatives in the Aegean, Turkey

This study assesses the current status of fishery cooperatives located on the Turkish Aegean Sea coasts and focuses on their characteristics, activities and problems. For this, 93.4% (n = 57) fishery cooperatives’ managers were interviewed. These fishery cooperatives were categorised into two groups according to their locations-Izmir metropolis where the Central Fish Market is located and the rest of the cities and non parametric statistical tools were employed to analyze the data collected. The results indicated that there are significant differences between the two groups when considering providing inputs, number of cooperative members, number of vessel owners, number of fishery depended members, attendance to general assembly, fulfilment of cooperative’s objectives, membership fee payment and lack of interest. These results may be of any help to the decision makers and managers to be more aware of the cooperatives problems and to design region-based strategies for better management of fishery cooperatives for the area under investigation and similar places elsewhere