Abstract

Conceptually, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a good fishery management tool, since they are known to help protect reef habitat; allow for recovery of fish population abundance, increases in individual fish size and thus fecundity; and allow for restoration of a climax community structure, within the boundaries of the MPA. However, there are few documented cases, to date, where MPAs have been shown to actually benefit surrounding reef fisheries.\The Soufriere Marine Management Area (SMMA), spanning an 11 km stretch of the central west coast of St. Lucia, opened on August 1, 1995, and comprises a series of zoned fishing priority and marine reserve areas. It is the first example in the Caribbean of a serious attempt at complex co-management of nearshore marine resources, striving to integrate management of these resources for the benefit of several (often conflicting) users. Monitoring the effects of the SMMA zoning not only on the resources themselves, but also on the resource users is therefore all the more important.\This paper reports on the effects of the SMMA zoning on the shallow reef fishery in Soufriere by documenting changes in catch rates and in fisher behavior, including the areas fished, the types of fishing gears used, and the distribution of fishing effort, which have occurred with the implementation of the SMMA.

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