Honeymoon period of Galapagos joint Management committee shattered.

After eight years of fighting for this fishery, this project was reopened for discussion and developed over the last two weeks by a Fisheries Technical Commission of the JMC, consisting of the Galapagos National Park (GNP), the Ecuadorian National Fishing Institute, the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Fishing Sector.

The emphasis of the Commission has been to directly address the conservationists fears and identify techniques to reduce the incidence of by-catch of sharks, birds and other protected species, and on this, consensus was reached. However, the JMC could not agree how many fishing boats should take part in the project, the identification of the fishing zones or the number of fisheries observers per boat.

The fishing sector wants to employ one fisheries observer per large fishing boat (which normally fishes with four small fishing boats) with the cost being shared between the five owners. However the other Marine Reserve users want a fisheries observer on every large boat and on every small boat.

Eduardo Abudeye Velez, the delegated representative of the Artisan Fishing Sector of Galapagos, and member of the Technical Commission, commented, “to put observers on each boat will excessively increase the cost of this project to over $1 million, making the costs unrealistic and unviable. The fishing sectors proposal costs 10% of this and could be funded by the fishermen themselves.”

Concerning zonification, the CDF proposed the trials should take place outside a 15 mile baseline of the three groups of islands. The fishing sector proposed only a 5 mile zone.

Eduardo Abudeye continued “We proposed this zonification initially to allay the fears and mistrust of the conservation sector, but they have misunderstood this and have ignored all the technical aspects of our project. They are not interested in how we will reduce by-catch, instead they have imposed high operational costs which are impossible for our sector, in crisis, to meet. They refuse to look at the economic and social aspects of our proposal. This has been the main GMR management problem for years and the reason why it isn’t working.”

At the end of the JMP meeting, the fishing sector remained committed to continue the Technical Commissions work and stated, “the different sectors working within the Technical Commission have distinct criteria and will continue to work to obtain consensus on the relevant points. This is a vital fishing alternative for the fishing sector and is needed now to stop the economic crisis growing within the communities of Galapagos.”

“Most of the other users of the Marine Reserve are in agreement with the CDF’s vision and do not want to discuss the social benefits of this project. We are perfectly aware that none of the other users, except for the fishing sector, are interested in seeing long line fishing in the GMR, due to the international “taboo” of this fishing method.”

“We are sorry that the huge personal efforts and support of the members of the Technical Commission and the GNP could not provide a solution to this stalemate between the users of the GMR. We would like to thank the work of the coordinator and facilitator of the JMP, who enabled us to meet and develop the technical aspects of this proposal constructively, and for calling the JMP meeting to help us put forward our objectives for a profitable and sustainable fishing sector in the GMR.”

“We had hoped that with the new Director of the CDF, Graham Watkins, and, the newly established Technical Commission, we could move this project forward. However we now recognise that the new open dialogue has conservation limitations, which we consider too radical, and which have their roots in countries where nobody understands the social reality and economic problems of the people of Galapagos. The honeymoon period of open dialogue is definitely over.”