Marine Policy

• The use of moored fish aggregating devices (MFADs) has greatly expanded in the Caribbean region in recent decades.
• States vary widely in the size, ownership institutions, and management of their MFAD fisheries.
• Lack of management may degrade potential MFAD benefits and increase risk of negative social and ecological outcomes.

Moored fish aggregating devices (MFADs) are promoted throughout global small-scale fisheries as tools to enhance livelihoods and shift fishing pressure onto offshore resources. A particularly large number of projects initiating and encouraging MFAD development have occurred in the Caribbean region. Despite ongoing promotion of MFAD fisheries in the region, there is limited understanding of their current extent, distribution, and management across Caribbean states. Here we integrate key informant surveys with a supporting literature review to generate the first comprehensive overview of MFAD fishery status and trends in the insular Caribbean and Bermuda. While regional growth has been substantial, we find wide diversity among states in terms of the number of MFADs deployed, MFAD ownership (private or public), fleet engagement, and the existence and enforcement of MFAD regulations. Our results suggest that despite the presence of regulations in some states, management limitations and private MFAD ownership may be associated with a rapid proliferation of deployed MFADs across the Caribbean. We discuss the critical role of management and monitoring in attaining the anticipated benefits of MFAD fisheries and reducing social and environmental risks. By documenting the diverse paths that MFAD fisheries have taken in different states, this study provides an opportunity for prospective and existing MFAD programs to better evaluate the risks and rewards associated with MFADs and to design appropriate management.​ 

Keywords: FAD fisheries, Moored fish aggregating devices, Small-scale fisheries

Marine spatial planning(MSP) has become an important tool to balance the needs of commercial,economical and recreational users of the marine environment with the protection of marine biodiversity. BirdLife International advocate the designation of marine Important BirdAreas (IBAs) as a key tool to improve the protection and sustainable management of the oceans, including the designation of Marine Protected Areas, which can feed into MSP processes.This study presents the results of three years of seabird tracking from the UK Overseas Territory of Anguilla,where marine resources are currently relatively unexploited and MSP is in its infancy.The core foraging areas of 1326 foraging trips from 238 individuals, representing five species (brown booby Sula leucogaster, masked booby Sula dactylatra, sooty tern Onychoprionfuscatus, magnificent frigate bird Fregata magnificens and red-billed tropic bird Phaethon aethereus) breeding on three of Anguilla's off shore cays were used to calculate the hotspot foraging areas for each study species.These high activity areas were then compared with fishing activity within Anguilla's Exclusive Economic zone and to proposed coastal developments.Two marine IBAs were identified within Anguilla's waters: the first to be defined, using seabird tracking data,in the Caribbea nregion. Whilst the level of fishing activity and associated seabird by-catch is hard to quantify, the core foraging areas  f seabirds breeding in Anguilla were observed to overlap with areas known for high fishing activity. These findings highlight the need to work both nationally and across territorial boundaries to
implement appropriate marine spatial planning.

Abstract

Marine protected areas are a primary strategy for the conservation of marine habitats and species across the globe. In small island developing states, they often exceed their terrestrial counterparts in both number and area. To assess their effectiveness as a conservation measure over time, the accurate and up- to-date representation of marine protected areas through spatial and tabular data is imperative in order to establish baselines. Various regional and global agreements have set specific protection targets and these require spatial reporting on protected areas as an indicator of progress. For the insular Caribbean region, this study considers progress towards global Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity which is to conserve at least 10% of coastal and marine areas, and progress towards the regional target of the Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI) to protect “at least 20% of nearshore marine and coastal habitats”, both aiming for a 2020 deadline. Progress towards these targets differs widely depending on the accuracy of the datasets and the methods used. In an effort to update the current baseline of protection within the insular Caribbean, multiple governments, the Nature Conservancy and the Caribbean Marine Protected Area Management Network and Forum collaborated to develop a single insular Caribbean protected area dataset with accurate boundary information and the best available ecoregional and political boundaries. This study represents the most in-depth and spatially accurate effort to date to determine marine protected area coverage in the insular Caribbean. It is found that some form of marine management has been designated for around 7.1% of our study area in the insular Caribbean; progress towards Aichi Target 11 averaged among sovereign states within the insular Caribbean stands at approximately 3.25% and only three of the 10 participating governments in the CCI have reached their 20% target. Ocean protection was further assessed across the 25 governments and the three marine ecoregions by four different marine zones. Recommendations are made on regional to global cooperation for data sharing and reporting on indicators, highlighting possible directions to fill marine conservation gaps in the insular Caribbean.