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’s tuna fishery.
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’s low-impact, socially responsible tuna fishery.
“While many small island countries and territories have committed to partial no-take areas, this will take marine conservation to another level entirely,” explained Stephane Weston, business manager and COO of the St Helena Fisheries Corporation.
He added: “Imagine 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’t be a single purse seine net to surround school of marine life.”
Through this project, IPNLF and local partners will create policies to promote and protect St Helena’s unique ecosystem, as well as the sustainable small-scale tuna fishery that has been part of island community for decades.
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.
Adam Baske, IPNLF’s director of policy and outreach, explained: “As 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.”
He concluded: “We also believe that promoting the ground-breaking policies that St Helena is prepared to implement will put a spotlight on all such fisheries – 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.”
The project will establish best-practice traceability, transparency and data recording systems and improve safety-at-sea.
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.
The project is also being supported by Oceans 5 – an international funders’ collaborative inspired by
opportunities that can bring lasting benefits to coastal communities.
