Rod Fujita

Illegal fishing is a serious problem that threatens the sustainability of fisheries around the world. Policy makers and fishery managers often rely on the imposition of strict sanctions and relatively intensive monitoring and enforcement programs to increase the costs of illegal behavior and thus deter it. However, while this can be successful in fisheries with sufficient resources to support high levels of surveillance and effective systems for imposing penalties, many fisheries lack the resources and requisite governance to successfully deter illegal fishing. Other types of governance systems, such as customary marine tenure and co-management, rely more on mechanisms such as norms, trust, and the perceived legitimacy of regulations for compliance. More generally, the absence of such social and psychological factors that encourage compliance in any fishery can undermine the efficacy of an otherwise effective and well-designed fishery management system. Here we describe insights from behavioral science that may be helpful in augmenting and securing the effectiveness of conventional deterrence strategies as well as in developing alternative means of deterring illegal fishing in fisheries in which high levels of surveillance and enforcement are not feasible. We draw on the behavioral science literature to describe a process for designing interventions for changing specific illegal fishing behaviors. The process begins with stakeholder characterization to capture existing norms, beliefs, and modes of thinking about illegal fishing as well as descriptions of specific illegal fishing behaviors. Potential interventions that may disrupt the beliefs, norms, and thought modes that give rise to these behaviors, along with those that encourage desirable behaviors, can be developed by applying principles gleaned from the behavioral science literature. These potential interventions can then be tested in artefactual experiments, piloted with small groups of actual stakeholders and, finally, implemented at scale.

Belize recently committed to establishing territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs), called "managed access" in Belize, throughout its territorial waters. While more remains to be done to ensure that scaling is successful, this national commitment and the design of a national system of managed access areas are important milestones in the expansion of rights-based fishery management in Belize. Theoretical work and empirical studies have yielded principles for scaling conservation innovations, many of which were applied in Belize over 3 yrs to achieve these milestones. Two pilot sites were established in 2011 and encompassed varied ecological and social conditions to maximize learning applicable to scaling to diverse sites. Participatory processes were used to identify fishery management challenges as perceived by fishers, managers, and other stakeholders, and to build consensus on solutions. A scaling team consisting of fishers, scientists, non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations, and government representatives with dedicated resources for scaling was formed. Our case study suggests that scaling principles derived from theoretical considerations and empirical analysis have contributed to the scaling of managed access in Belize, which is expected to result in significant conservation, social, and economic benefits. This in turn suggests that these principles may be relatively robust and perhaps can be applied elsewhere to scale conservation initiatives. Our case study also suggests that careful consideration of new information and changing conditions accompanied by appropriate decisions and changes in tactics and strategy are important for successful scaling.

Coral reefs support numerous ornamental fisheries, but there are concerns about stock sustainability due to the volume of animals caught. Such impacts are difficult to quantify and manage because fishery data are often lacking. Here, we suggest a framework that integrates several data‐poor assessment and management methods in order to provide management guidance for fisheries that differ widely in the kinds and amounts of data available. First, a resource manager could assess the status of the ecosystem (using quantitative metrics where data are available and semi‐quantitative risk assessment where they are not) and determine whether overall fishing mortality should be reduced. Next, productivity susceptibility analysis can be used to estimate vulnerability to fishing using basic information on life history and the nature of the fishery. Information on the relative degree of exploitation (e.g. export data or ratios of fish density inside and outside no‐take marine reserves) is then combined with the vulnerability ranks to prioritize species for precautionary management and further analysis. For example, species that are both highly exploited and vulnerable are good candidates for precautionary reductions in allowable capture. Species that appear to be less vulnerable could be managed on a stock‐specific basis to prevent over‐exploitation of some species resulting from the use of aggregate catch limits. The framework could be applied to coral reef ornamental fisheries which typically lack landings, catch‐per‐unit‐effort and age‐size data to generate management guidance to reduce overfishing risk. We illustrate the application of this framework to an ornamental fishery in Indonesia.

Because conventional markets value only certain goods or services in the ocean (e.g. fish), other services provided by coastal and marine ecosystems that are not priced, paid for, or stewarded tend to become degraded. In fact, the very capacity of an ecosystem to produce a valued good or service is often reduced because conventional markets value only certain goods and services, rather than the productive capacity. Coastal socio‐ecosystems are particularly susceptible to these market failures due to the lack of clear property rights, strong dependence on resource extraction, and other factors. Conservation strategies aimed at protecting unvalued coastal ecosystem services through regulation or spatial management (e.g. Marine Protected Areas) can be effective but often result in lost revenue and adverse social impacts, which, in turn, create conflict and opposition. Here, we describe ‘ecomarkets’ – markets and financial tools – that could, under the right conditions, generate value for broad portfolios of coastal ecosystem services while maintaining ecosystem structure and function by addressing the unique problems of the coastal zone, including the lack of clear management and exclusion rights. Just as coastal tenure and catch‐share systems generate meaningful conservation and economic outcomes, it is possible to imagine other market mechanisms that do the same with respect to a variety of other coastal ecosystem goods and services. Rather than solely relying on extracting goods, these approaches could allow communities to diversify ecosystem uses and focus on long‐term stewardship and conservation, while meeting development, food security, and human welfare goals. The creation of ecomarkets will be difficult in many cases, because rights and responsibilities must be devolved, new social contracts will be required, accountability systems must be created and enforced, and long‐term patterns of behaviour must change. We argue that efforts to overcome these obstacles are justified, because these deep changes will strongly complement policies and tools such as Marine Protected Areas, coastal spatial management, and regulation, thereby helping to bring coastal conservation to scale.