NEW YEARS RESOLUTION: NTMRs FOR BONAIRE

No Take Marine Reserves - areas where fishing activity is not permitted - seem to be one of the hottest topics around in marine conservation these days. Australia is the country taking the lead and setting the standard as far as No Take Marine Reserves are concerned. Having spent nearly ten years and a small fortune rezoning the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the Australian Government has recently announced their plans to designate fully one third of the Marine Park as No Take Reserves from which both commercial and recreational fishing will be banned. This will mean that by as early as mid 2004 fishing will be banned from an additional 100,000 square kilometers of the Great Barrier Reef.

No Take Marine Reserves are being dubbed the "Double Payoff" system. They can create win-win situations for both conservation and fisheries if they are designed right. By closing off areas to fishing not only do the reef and the fish populations inside the closed area benefit, but there is a well documented "spill over effect" which boosts fishing outside of the Reserve.

But achieving a double payoff may not be as easy as it sounds. To do it right requires an intimate knowledge of the ecosystem and fisheries as well as trade offs between competing objectives, cost, benefits and levels of uncertainty. To give an example, broadly speaking to maximize the benefits to the environment No Take areas need to be as large as possible with a single large area being the best option. To translate that into our situation would mean setting aside an area such as Klein Bonaire as a single No Take Reserve. However to maximize fisheries benefits No Take areas need to be small and scattered. To help them with this complex juggling act, systems like those being implemented in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park rely on sophisticated computer modeling to design and locate the No Take areas.

But that does not mean that No Take reserves can only be implemented in areas that have access to this level of sophisticated technology. In fact we have an excellent example of a Marine Park with very a successful system of No Take Reserves right here in the Caribbean: the Soufriere Marine Management Area on St Lucia.

According to Trevor Ward, one of the scientist involved in designing the No Take Areas for the Great Barrier Reef, all you really need to establish your own No Take Marine Reserves are:
· Clearly stated objectives which everyone can understand
· Good mapping of the habitat and a systematic approach
· The best available data
· Decisions which are clearly articulated and available for public review
· Effective monitoring

We could do that! We know that Bonaire's reef fish are showing clear signs of overfishing and we have neighbours right here in the Caribbean who have already demonstrated the fisheries benefits of setting aside closed areas who would be willing to work with us. So for those of you still agonizing over New Years Resolutions, maybe our collective New Years Resolution for Bonaire should be the establishment of our very own "Fish Protected Areas".