It will aim to establish a conservation area throughout the entire St Helena maritime zone to shield a vast ocean area from harmful fishing activities and provide valuable protection for the local community\u2019s low-impact, socially responsible tuna fishery.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile many small island countries and territories have committed to partial no-take areas, this will take marine conservation to another level entirely,\u201d explained Stephane Weston, business manager and COO of the St Helena Fisheries Corporation.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cImagine a 400,000km2 maritime zone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where dolphins, whales, sharks and turtles have no chance of encountering bottom trawling or baited longlines. There won\u2019t be a single purse seine net to surround school of marine life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through this project, IPNLF and local partners will create policies to promote and protect St Helena\u2019s unique ecosystem, as well as the sustainable small-scale tuna fishery that has been part of island community for decades.<\/p>\n
Over the next three years, the partnership will work with local government to ensure polices are adopted and implemented that ban all destructive fishing gears; enhance management; and strengthen monitoring, control, and surveillance (MCS) to prevent illegal fishing.<\/p>\n
Adam Baske, IPNLF\u2019s director of policy and outreach, explained: \u201cAs an international organisation that is working to develop and demonstrate the value of one-by-one tuna fisheries to coastal communities, IPNLF is extremely passionate about this project. The key to its success will be ensuring the fishing communities and the island as a whole benefit from these commitments and we propose to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He concluded: \u201cWe also believe that promoting the ground-breaking policies that St Helena is prepared to implement will put a spotlight on all such fisheries \u2013 further impressing upon suppliers, retailers and consumers everywhere the importance of making smart seafood choices, while making St Helena a global inspiration to like-minded governments and other large ocean states.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project will establish best-practice traceability, transparency and data recording systems and improve safety-at-sea.<\/p>\n
Aligned with all of these measures, project partners plan to communicate the accomplishments of this fishery to a global audience, inspiring like-minded governments and coastal communities with this model that rewards low-impact fisheries and marine conservation.<\/p>\n
The project is also being supported by Oceans 5 \u2013 an international funders\u2019 collaborative inspired by<\/p>\n
opportunities that can bring lasting benefits to coastal communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF), the St Helena government, the St Helena Fisheries Corporation have launched a new project to protect the island\u2019s tuna fishery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10286,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284\/revisions\/10286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10284"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=10284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}