Abstract

Small-scale fisheries is the basis for about 90% of employment in the fisheries sector in most developing countries including those of the Caribbean. Small-scale fisheries are further responsible for about half of the landings. The data poor situation and the role of small-scale fisheries in poverty alleviation means that many small-scale fisheries are fundamentally open access and either unmanaged or managed inappropriately. Fisheries Departments in many developing countries are understaffed and underfunded. Their staffs have been trained according to principles originally developed for temperate specialized single species fisheries - principles that are inade-quate to deal with the situation in countries dominated by small-scale fisheries targeting a multitude of species. In the view of many fisheries administrators, to make matters worse, in the last two decades it has increasingly been accepted that fisheries management must move away from the management of the individual stock towards an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) taking into account the interactions and interdependencies between all the compartments of the ecosystem in an attempt to balance ecological, economic and social benefits.

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