Fishing about and about fishing

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: WHAT THEY DO TO FISHERMEN? 

 

No one can dispute the need for nature reserves or Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in certain marine and coastal habitats, such as coral reefs, sponge and inshore seagrass beds, and some other endangered or unique habitats, as same unique areas are protected on land. According to the U.N., as of 2010 some 5,000 MPAs cover 0.8% of the world ocean. Dr. Ben Halpern of the University of California, wrote in “Ecological Applications” of Feb., 2003 that average fish biomass and diversity are higher in MPAs of any size than they had been in the same sites, or in the neighbourhood, before the reserves were set up. As to whether there’s a significant “spilling effect” that enriches areas adjacent to MPAs, the jury is still out.  

 

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are designed to protect living, non-living, cultural, and/or historic resources within defined boundaries. The term MPA may indicate, depending on different legal definitions and MPAs-promoters, a great variety of types of marine areas under various degrees of conservation. For example, in the USA less than 1 percent of marine waters are no-take MPAs, while the others are conservation areas that may permit limited extraction activities. The range of MPA’s protection may comprise from just selected limits on marine traffic, drilling, mining, fishing gear types, fishing seasons, fishing capacity and catch limits, etc., up to total ban on extraction of marine life of any kind and of liquid and solid minerals, and on any longshore development. Observation and research, however, may be allowed.

 

In practice MPAs are rarely designed or implemented in dialogue between fisheries and conservation stakeholders. The potential of MPAs to reconcile fisheries management and conservation is rarely realized. In addition, misunderstandings prevail about the effects and goals of MPAs between fishing and conservation communities, leading to a lack of coordination and collaboration in the MPAs’ implementation. 

Unfortunately, misunderstandings and even conflicts about the MPAs‘ goals and consequences among fishermen, the executing authorities, and conservationists, impair the choice of scope and nature, as well as implementation and enforcement of MPAs. While usually MPAs are portrayed as a component in an ecosystem management, they only too often are designed or implemented without true consultation and co-operation with the human participants in the ecosystem. MPAs established without them cannot ensure their effective management and attain the intended objectives. Consequently, in some cases fishermen complain of being unfairly displaced from their traditional fishing areas, while for example the oil industry is allowed to perform seismic testing for oil and gas and even extraction. Another example was establishment of marine sanctuaries in Indian coastal waters to protect olive Ridley turtles, which led to desperate protests on the part of local artisanal fishermen, who were deprived of their only possibility to earn a living. Many committed suicide.   

But to die because of MPAs fishermen don’t have to commit suicide. In 1997, five MPAs were established in Guam, an U.S.-administered Pacific island that displaced the indigenous Chamorro fishermen them from traditional fishing grounds, prevented them from teaching fishing techniques in a safe environment to the younger generation, thus putting at risk the future of their culture. Before the MPAs were established, artisanal fishermen fished primarily in the protected areas of the Western (leeward side) and Southern Coasts. Once the preserves were established in 1997, the fishing community had to move into unfamiliar, dangerous waters. A study by D. Lucas and J. M. Lincoln, published by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety an Health (NIOSH) provides concrete evidence that risk of drowning of the indigenous Guam inshore fishermen forced to  fish more heavily on the East Coast (windward side of the island more than doubled after the enforcement of MPAs in 2001. The NIOSH report “The Impact of Marine Preserve Areas on the Safety of Fishermen on Guam” also found that the proportion of drowning deaths to Chamorro fishermen that occurred on the East Coast (in more hazardous waters) increased from 20 percent during 1986-2000 to 63 percent during 2001-2009.   

According to Dr. Craig J. Severance, an expert on Oceania, who taught anthropology at  the Univ. of Hawaii (sevc@hawaii.edu), Guam fisherman have argued the issue for some time, and while many of them argued strenuously against any further MPA development, when it came to official "Hearings", not everyone learned of them or was willing or able to speak up. In October 2008 Pacific News Center reported that the Guam Fishermen's Cooperative registered its opposition to the proposed Marine National Monument asserted to cover only the waters surrounding three of the northern most islands and the deepest spot of the Marianas trench. The Co-op President Manny Duenas simple said that he does not trust that Guam's waters will not be affected. He sent a letter to President George Bush opposing the national monument plan, and delivered over 1,000 letters from people against the plan to the office of Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo, who represents Guam in the U.S. Congress. Ms. Bordallo failed to react to WF’s request for comments.

 Map of Guam MPAs

 

Another case is that of American Samoa’s no take MPA — the Rose Atoll — where the people of Manu’a, were cut off from what they identify as traditional fishing grounds.

 

A. Charles and L. Wilson, wrote in the ICES Journal of Marine Science (66: 6–15, 2009) that planning, implementing, and managing MPAs requires that attention be paid not only to the biological and oceanographic issues, but equally to the human dimensions: social, economic, and institutional considerations that can dramatically affect the outcome of MPA implementation (tony.charles:@smu.ca).

 

The case of Guam emphasizes the need for social and simple human sensitivity when establishing MPAs and the absolute necessity for genuine consultation with fishing people in the area. MPAs should be set up in participatory processes in all stages—consultation, design, implementation, and monitoring, with special attention to the human values as expressed in historical and current human uses of their area, such as the “Customary exchange” practiced on Pacific islands*), and to social and economic concequences. Also displacement of artisanal fishermen whose impact on local fish populations is relatively small, can be avoided by allowing them to keep fishing in the MPA. 

 

See: Craig Severance in Pacific Fisheries News, Summer 2010.

 

Exploring the Role of MPAs in Reconciling Fisheries Management with Conservation

Not always authorities are setting up protected zones in a top-down manner.  In Costa Rica, a fishing skipper. Donald McGuiness together with Miguel Durán, an inspector with the Fisheries Institute (Incopesca), started a conservation project that led to declaration of the Golfo Dulce a “responsible fishing area” – the largest in Central America, agreed on by all the different users representatives from all sectors of commercial and  sport fisheries, who jointly determined ways to fish in a sustainable manner.  Not that such attempts are always successful. Last November, for the third time in 10 years, representatives of two federations of cooperatives of small-scale fishermen applied to El Salvador legislature to create a five-mile exclusion zone along the coast, closed to the industrial fleet fishing for shrimp in the area off the coast of this Central American. So far the bugger business interests prevailed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guam: 

 Map of Marine Preserve Areas on Guam

 

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*** This increased effort on lobster stocks led to a decline in catches, which prompted local fishers to establish the Eastport Peninsula Lobster Protection Committee in 1995 (Rowe and Feltham, 2000; Power and Mercer, 2003). In the course of their conservation efforts, the fishers also recruited scientists from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Parks Canada, and DFO, as well as involving a local high school class to assist with collecting and analysing information (Collins and Lien, 2002). This work led, in 1997, to an agreement between the Committee and DFO to close fishing areas seen as prime lobster habitats (Fisheries and Oceans, 2007), with the aim of building up the lobster stock, with conservation thereby supporting community livelihoods (Collins and Lien, 2002). In 1999, feeling that the closure had been successful and ready for further steps, the Committee requested DFO to consider the closed areas as formal MPAs, to further support ongoing conservation initiatives.***