Abstract

The Wider Caribbean is a region recognized for its great cultural diversity and inhabited by more than 134 million people who live on or near the coast in addition (CANARI 2020); a region that welcomed approximately 31.5 million stay-over visitors in 2019, who approximately spent more than 40 billion dollars in 2019. (Caribbean Tourism Association. 2020). It is a world’s premier cruise tourism destination, commanding over 60% of the world cruise market. The region possesses productive, diverse, and well-developed coral reefs, seagrasses, mangroves, beaches, pelagic and deep-sea ecosystems that have resulted from complex interactions happening inside a semi-enclosed, tropical, and very active oceanographic environments. This rich biodiversity is supporting several fisheries considered to be a significant provider of food, livelihoods, income, and subsistence in the Western Atlantic region area, where approximately 500,000 people are em-ployed directly in the primary sector (capture fishery), with another three million jobs in ancillary activities (WECAFC 2022). Yet the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR) is a net importer of fisheries products. In terms of volume the region imported almost 2 billion tonnes of fisheries products with a value of around USD 8.1 billion, while exports represented around 974 thousand tonnes with a value of USD 4.8 billion (WECAFC 2022).

PDF Preview