Blue Ventures advocate the “temporary fisheries closure” approach
The Ecologist reports, 12th May 2015, on the Blue Ventures proposal: “Marine conservation is usually expressed in austere and negative terms, writes Alasdair Harris [CEO Blue Ventures], with strict quotas and exclusion zones. But the truth is the exact opposite: it’s about working with natural ecosystems to unlock their productive potential, creating sustainable wealth and abundance for fishing communities while enhancing marine biodiversitybiodiversity Biological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals..
Conservation doesn’t need to be about taking less. It can be one of the highest yielding opportunities on the planet because of the speed and productivity with which fisheries can recover.
Our work began 12 years ago in a single coastal village in Madagascar.
With communities facing extreme poverty and their fisheries collapsing, we started by encouraging locals to cordon off a small section of their octopus fishing area for 7 months. When it was reopened the community saw huge increase in not only their catch, but also their incomes.
As news of this remarkable fishery boom spread, neighbouring communities started copying this approach. Crucially, this sparked interest in more ambitious coastal management efforts, leading to the creation of the country’s first Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) governed by a small network of fishing villages.
Since then, this temporary fishery closure model has gone viral along thousands of kilometres of Madagascar’s coastline, spawning a grass roots marine conservation revolution with 64 more Locally Managed Marine Areas established to date.
Source: Blue Ventures press release and The Ecologist. For further details see
http://blueventures.org/the-ecologist-sustainable-abundance-rebuilding-fisheries-to-support-coastal-communities-in-madagascar
Note: Alasdair Harris is a marine ecologist and the founding CEO of Blue Ventures. He has spent the past decade developing conservation initiatives in the Indian Ocean, and led his first marine research expedition to Madagascar in 2001. He is the recipient of a 2015 Skoll Award for social entrepreneurship. Blue Ventures is a Marinet Member
