NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC -Bahamas Prime Minister Phillip Davis has called for more research and the availability of data regarding the fishing industry in the Caribbean.
“Fisheries in The Bahamas, like many other Caribbean nations, grapple with the devastating effects of climate change, habitat degradation, and unsustainable fishing practices, including poaching,” he told the opening ceremony of the 76th Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute conference.
Prime Minister Phillip Davis
“In tackling these issues, we stand to gain vital insights by mobilizing research and technologies, especially up-to-date data collection methods,” Phillips told delegates attending the conference being held under the theme “Linking science and society towards a vision for sustainable fisheries.”
Phillips said that his country, like the rest of the Caribbean, has a profound relationship with its waters, playing a fundamental role in the livelihoods of the region’s population.
“Our foodways are undeniably tied to our maritime inheritance,” he said, noting that for generations, “our fisheries have sustained us.
“And we recognize that now, more than ever, we must intervene to sustain them. In my government’s Blueprint for Change, our strategic roadmap for national development, we pledged to modernize the fishing industry, create opportunities in ocean sciences, and protect our sea and marine life”.
He said developing sustainable fisheries and expanding the Blue Economy has been a significant priority, with the goals being fully aligned with the objectives of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, which he said is appropriately dubbed life below water.
“It entreats us to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development .”This means not only maximizing the economic returns of our fisheries, an industry that employs tens of thousands of Bahamians, underpins our tourism product, and bolsters local food security
“It also means enacting sustainable policy measures, expanding protected areas, and rolling out educational campaigns to support the preservation of what is, in effect, the world’s largest ecosystem. ”
Davis said that fishery exports represent a profoundly encouraging anomaly in the Bahamas, which developed import dependencies in the process of decolonization to fill in the gaps left by non-sustainable and exploitative colonial governments.
He said in 2015, fish and fisheries products exports accounted for 31 percent of Bahamian exports, generating an estimated US$80 million annually. Davis said exports in the sector are a valuable source of foreign currency and, even more significantly, have produced a positive trade balance.
“This, my friends, is the anomaly. And we want more anomalies like this for our import-dependent economy. With fishery imports coming to roughly a third of the profits of corresponding exports, the fisheries sector is a promising contributor to reducing our trade deficit.”
He said this idea was made especially clear in a 2016 report released by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in conjunction with The Bahamas Department of Marine Resources.
“In light of this, we might see how all the UN’s SDGs are interconnected. Safeguarding life below water is fundamental to achieving goal 15, which is concerned with preserving life on land. Just as it has a lot to do with Goal 1 (eradicating poverty), Goal 2 (eliminating hunger), Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth), Goal 12 (responsible consumption), and several others. ”
Prime Minister Davis said that sustainable development, it follows, cannot be achieved by gazing through a magnifying glass.
“ We must maintain a big-picture view of the many parts; we must consider not just the cog, but the entire system; and we must act in one arena to advance others in turn,” he said, adding, “the key to such nuanced, multi-dimensional endeavors, as this conference’s theme rightly reminds us, will be bringing science and society together to realize sustainable visions.”
Davis said science, mainly research and data collection, will be crucial to the continued efforts to address the many threats facing the fisheries sector.
Prime Minister said the tools and techniques of the natural sciences can empower members of society to play a more active and informed part in preserving life below water.
“Data collection will give governments a better grasp of what’s happening on the ground, or in this case, on the water, leading to more effective policy interventions.
“I am certainly not the first to suggest that the limited availability of data has hampered governance of fisheries, be it regarding local catch, levels of poaching, the status of ecosystems, or even the degree of oxygen in our waters.
“Insufficient data is an issue that plagues states across the developing world, not just us in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Bahamas’ archipelagic geography poses unique challenges to data collection, as there are so many areas where fish are being landed and so many square kilometers of water to consider. “
Prime Minister Davis said the Bahamas, for instance, occupies roughly the same area as the entirety of the Lesser Antilles, at around 100,000 square kilometers.
“Despite these difficult realities, we stand to gain a lot from keeping better track of our fisheries given that, as one publication by The Nature Conservancy observed, “The Path to Sustainable Fisheries is paved with Data.” In other words, as the saying goes, if it doesn’t get measured, it doesn’t get managed.
“Fisheries that are not sufficiently studied and measured, referred to as data-limited fisheries, are at risk of succumbing to unanticipated or simply unperceived shocks,” he told the conference, warning of coral bleaching in the Bahamas.
“Without their sustained data collection and scientific observations, the plight of coral reefs in our waters would go largely unnoticed and unaddressed. Research and data collection is also critical to our efforts to archive the oral histories of anglers and their extensive knowledge of ‘native’ techniques, species, and topographies. ”
“Data collection has also proven to be a fundamental step in sustainably exporting our fisheries to the globe. The Spiny Lobster Fishery Improvement Project, for example, mobilized data on Bahamian spiny lobsters, which we colloquially refer to as crawfish, to achieve a certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the foremost environmental standard for fisheries.”
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