Abstract

Increasing needs by fisheries managers to establish harvest controls to sustain fishery resources have shifted priorities to meet the minimum stock assessment requirements for each fishery. To achieve an optimal data collection system of managed resources, managers acknowledge the need to address data deficiencies that exist for many fisheries. This is particularly true for the Caribbean region where essentially all of the stock assessments are considered as data limited. In addition to the challenges of limited survey capabilities, managers and assessment scientists must address sampling and modeling uncertainties in an environment with complexity in species diversity, life history parameters, and habitats that are difficult to sample. The Caribbean is further complicated by the diversity of fisheries, lack of technical capacity, and political complexity. Furthermore, the biological and technical challenges of assessing artisanal fisheries are not small-scale issues because of the connectivity of stocks across the Caribbean jurisdictions. For these reasons, scientists and resource managers must work collaboratively on improving the science to safeguard the health and sustainability of fishery resources and their habitats in the Caribbean region. A collaborative capacity building strategy for enhanced survey capabilities is the ultimate goal, yet the most immediate benefits can be obtained by evaluating and developing the analytic tools to conduct assessments of data deficient fisheries. The political will for capability building is not only driven by mandates to achieve sustainable fishery resources, but also requires partnership and consensus on how best to improve the science for policy decisions

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