Abstract

Ensuring the sustainable use of wild caught fisheries is a global priority in the 21st century. Effective marine manage-ment however comes with an associated cost that many developing nations cannot afford directly. Development banks and non-governmental organizations have frequently picked up the bill for helping to improve fisheries management. These interventions are often framed in the context of biodiversity conservation, such as protecting critical habitats in areas where fishing is a principal threat. This approach, however, is vulnerable to cycles in conservation vogue and ultimately limited by the availability of philanthropic and development funding. Here we use the spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) fishery in Honduras as an example of how some newly developed management tools, including real time analysis of vessel monitoring systems and the implementation of traceability schemes, can have economic, social, and ecological benefits for the fishery. There are two parallel fisheries for P. argus, in Honduras: a trap fishery that uses baited wooden traps and a SCUBA dive fishery where lobster are collected from the seafloor by divers using gaff sticks. Dive and trap boats have been spatially separated by depth on the off shore fishing banks. Divers target lobsters in the shallower areas down to around 40 m (120 ft) whilst trappers set their traps between 40 m and 200 m (120 ft - 600 ft) to ensure they are not touched by divers.

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