New funding for marine parks expansion

Computer programmers are designing a smartphone app to allow boaters to assist with enforcement across an expanded network of marine parks.

The proposals, which include dramatically expanding the no-fishing zones around the Cayman Islands, will go through another round of public consultation this year, according to Environment Minister Wayne Panton.

Mr. Panton gave his personal support to the plan, saying Cayman’s current marine parks were “no longer enough” to protect the islands’ natural resources from the threat of overfishing and development.

His comments came as the U.K. based Darwin initiative announced more than $100,000 in new funding to research and address concerns raised in an earlier study.

This includes developing phone and iPad apps that will allow people to report poaching and other marine violations in real time.

Experts at Bangor University in Wales are working on the technology, which will also allow boaters to use the GPS function on their phone to identify if they are in a marine protected area and to check what regulations apply.

Department of Environment officers will also be equipped with tablets that allow them to log in to licensing databases from the field, saving time and paperwork.

Gina Ebanks-Petrie, director of the Department of Environment, said the technology would enable the department to do more with the same resources, enabling them to police a much wider marine protected area without a significant increase in manpower.

Researchers will also look at the impact of lionfish on Cayman’s reefs, including a study to discover if the invasive fish has adapted its behavior to hide from divers. The lionfish research will ultimately impact how culling is managed.

Further work is also being done on aggregation sites, used by various species of fish, most famously the Nassau grouper, for annual spawning events. Scientists believe many different species could be using the same sites year-round, making them “the maternity wards” of the ocean and potentially worthy of additional protection.

They also want to take a closer look at recreational fishing habits in Cayman.

The marine parks plan proposes to include concessionary zones with boat ramps for fisherman at various points adjacent to the no-take areas.

Dr. John Turner, a senior lecturer at Bangor University and Darwin Initiative project partner, said, “When you have a marine protected area, there are going to be more fish, there are going to be larger fish. These concessionary areas would allow people to benefit from the overspill.

“We need to know more about how sustainable this would be. We are very interested in asking what fish people expect to be able to catch in these zones. We need to know what people are fishing now and how they may be impacted by the marine reserve around.”

Cayman was hailed as a world leader in environmental protection when it first introduced marine parks in 1986. The proposal to expand the protected zones, which came from an initial study also funded by the Darwin Initiative, has been discussed for several years, with some protest, particularly from fishermen who fear a threat to their livelihood.

Among the proposals are expanding the no-take zones – from which no marine life can be extracted – from about 15 percent of the narrow marine shelf around the islands to between 40 and 50 percent of the shelf and extending them from shore to a depth of 200 feet, compared to the current depth of 80 feet.

Mr. Panton said he supported an expansion of marine parks. But he said the new government needed the opportunity to consult with the public before going ahead.

The “post-project” phase of the research will be completed by September, at which point Mr. Panton hopes to be able to bring a proposal to the Legislative Assembly.

He added, “The current marine parks have provided benefits but they are no longer enough to counter the growing threats from overfishing, coastal development, invasive species, disease of corals and other marine organisms as well as the impact of climate change.”

He said Cayman Islands’ population had doubled and there had been significant development, as well as an increase in visitors, since the parks were first introduced 28 years ago.

“The legal and regulatory framework is no longer sufficient. It needs to be enhanced, it needs to be improved,” he said. More

 

Management of marine resources requires radical change, according to FAO

The management of marine resources requires a new strategy to safeguard world food security while promoting sustainable development, says the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) CEO, Jose Graziano da Silva.

Jose Graziano da Silva, FAO Director-General

"Time for a sea change in the management of the oceans has come," said the FAO official during a meeting of high-level policy makers held in UAE.

Graziano da Silva stressed that it is necessary to make profound changes in the way we manage and use the planet marine resources, and it is important to ensure the welfare of coastal and island countries.

"We cannot keep using marine and aquatic resources as if they were endless. And we cannot keep using our oceans as a waste pool," he said in the context of the Blue Economy Summit, held between 19 and 20 January in Abu Dhabi.

The head of the FAO said that ocean health is seriously threatened by several factors, among which he mentioned pollution, overfishing, weather changes and rising sea levels caused by climate change.

On average, about 17 per cent of the animal protein consumed worldwide comes from fisheries-aquaculture sector. However, in many small island developing States that figure is much higher.

According to FAO, the livelihoods of 12 per cent of the world's population depend on fisheries and aquaculture, mainly in developing countries.

Nevertheless, experts estimate that 30 per cent of global fish stocks are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion.

Several studies by FAO indicate that economic losses for marine fishing industry due to mismanagement, inefficiency and fishing represent a USD 50 billion annually.

Moreover, scientists warn that climate change poses new challenges to the people who depend on the oceans, by changing the distribution and productivity of marine and freshwater species, and altering food webs.

Although in the past 30 years about 80 agreements were signed to address threats to the oceans and their resources, Graziano da Silva emphasized that "We not only need to commit, we need to act."

Since Rio +20 Conference in 2012, the model of "blue economy" emphasizes conservation and sustainable management, and aims to ensure that small island developing States and costal countries in the developing world benefit equitably from their marine resources.

Therefore, the FAO is promoting a new Blue Growth Initiative, through which the organization will support countries in the development and implementation of agendas on blue economy and growth. More

 

Taking Stock: World Fish Catch Falls to 90 Million Tons in 2012

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that the world’s wild fish harvest will fall to 90 million tons in 2012, down 2 percent from 2011. This is close to 4 percent below the all-time peak haul of nearly 94 million tons in 1996.

The wild fish catch per person has dropped even more dramatically, from 17 kilograms (37.5 pounds) per person at its height in 1988 to 13 kilograms in 2012—a 37-year low. While wild fish harvests have flattened out during this time, the output from fish farming has soared from 24 million tons in the mid-1990s to a projected 67 million tons in 2012.

Over the last several decades, as demand for fish and shellfish for food, feed, and other products rose dramatically, fishing operations have used increasingly sophisticated technologies—such as on-vessel refrigeration and processing facilities, spotter planes, and GPS satellites. Industrial fishing fleets initially targeted the northern hemisphere’s coastal fish stocks, then as stocks were depleted they expanded progressively southward on average close to one degree of latitude annually since 1950. The fastest expansion was during the 1980s and early 1990s. Thereafter, the only frontiers remaining were the high seas, the hard-to-reach waters near Antarctica and in the Arctic, and the depths of the oceans.

The escalating pursuit of fish—now with gross revenue exceeding $80 billion per year—has had heavy ecological consequences, including the alteration of marine food webs via a massive reduction in the populations of larger, longer-lived predatory fish such as tunas, cods, and marlins. Unselective fishing gear, including longlines and bottom-scraping trawls, kill large numbers of non-target animals like sea turtles, sharks, and corals.

As of 2009, some 57 percent of the oceanic fish stocks evaluated by FAO are “fully exploited,” with harvest levels at or near what fisheries scientists call maximum sustainable yield (MSY). If we think of a fish stock as a savings account, fishing at MSY is theoretically similar to withdrawing only the accrued interest, avoiding dipping into the principal.

Some 30 percent of stocks are “overexploited”—they have been fished beyond MSY and require strong management intervention in order to rebuild. The share of stocks in this category has tripled since the mid-1970s. A well-known example of this is the Newfoundland cod fishery that collapsed in the early 1990s and has yet to recover.

This leaves just 13 percent of oceanic fish stocks in the “non-fully exploited” category, down from 40 percent in 1974. Unfortunately, these remaining stocks tend to have very limited potential for safely increasing the catch.

These FAO figures describe 395 fisheries that account for some 70 percent of the global catch. Included are the small minority that have undergone the time-consuming and expensive process of formal scientific stock assessment, with the remainder being "unassessed" fisheries. There are thousands more unassessed fisheries, however, that are absent from the FAO analysis. In a 2012 Science article, Christopher Costello and colleagues published the first attempt to characterize all of the world’s unassessed fisheries. The authors report that 64 percent of them were overexploited as of 2009.

The top 10 fished species represent roughly one quarter of the world catch. Nearly all of the stocks of these species are considered fully exploited (most of these fish have more than one geographically distinct stock), including both of the major stocks of Peruvian anchovy, the world's leading wild-caught fish. Stocks that are overexploited and in need of rebuilding include largehead hairtail—a ribbon-like predator caught mainly by Chinese ships—in its main fishing grounds in the Northwest Pacific. (See data.)

Despite the unsustainable nature of current harvest levels, countries continue to subsidize fishing fleets in ways that encourage even higher catches. Governments around the world spend an estimated $16 billion annually on increasing fleet size and fish-catching ability, including $4 billion for fuel subsidies. Industrial countries spend some $10 billion of that total. More than $2 billion is spent by China, whose 15-million-ton catch is nearly triple that of the next closest country, Indonesia. More