Sustainable Household Economics: A Case of Altering Income of Small-Scale Fishermen in Indonesia

Poor society is still common in almost every developing country, particularly in coastal area. Differences in socio-economic conditions in each country have an impact on peoples behavior in dealing with the development of the livelihoods. It is noteworthy that some alternative livelihoods are important ways to raise local economy which caused by decreased production of capture fisheries. The aim of this paper is to compare the economics outputs of two livelihoods activities, namely seaweed farming and capture fisheries. The objective of this study is to compare the economic returns of two different livelihood activities as well as compare the financial returns and costs of each activity. This study was conducted in the South Sulawesi province of Indonesia by administering semi-structured and structured questionnaires to 200 fishermen. Descriptive analysis used to interpret the data. The findings shows, fishermen were interested in seaweed farming as an individual basis to keep their income and livelihoods activity. The number of farmers and farms of seaweed have increased sharply. Finally, fishermen do seaweed farming Eucheuma cottonii within floating long line method, together with fishing activity that adopting fishing net around seaweed farm.