News & Events: Events, Conferences and Workshops: African Environment Programme ESRC/NERC Transdisciplinary Seminars and Workshops
How much data do we need to effectively manage coral reef fisheries?
AEP Workshop organised by Lizzie Tyler, 24 April 2006, Oxford University Centre for the Environment
Please Note: This event has finished. For information on our current seminar series please see our Events, Conferences and Workshops listing.
We know relatively little about coral reef ecosystems and fish communities and the effects of human impacts on them. There are critical gaps in our knowledge, both pure and applied. Coral reef ecosystems are species-rich systems with many interactions, so this research is likely to be a significant task. However, we need to manage fisheries now and this workshop addressed some of the challenges involved in achieving this.
Collecting data sufficient for the management of reef fisheries is demanding because of their complexity due to the high diversity of catch and the disparate nature of landings. In addition, most reef fisheries are in developing countries, where little money is available for data collection and donor funding may be sporadic. The precautionary approach to fisheries management has been supported, but there are likely to be social and political difficulties in applying it. The workshop looked into how we can provide evidence of unsustainable use of fisheries and suggested how coral reef fisheries could be managed with minimal data.