Seaweed Farms.

How do we control fishing pressure in the face of poverty? This is the most pressing question for managers of coral reefs in developing countries today. People with few options are more likely to disregard regulations on fishing. They therefore need viable alternative sources of income (alternative livelihoods) in order to reduce fishing pressure. But what makes an alternative lead to a reduction in fishing pressure and achieve conservation goals?

Despite the potential of alternative livelihood programmes there is a serious lack of information and guidance on how to manage them to reduce fishing pressure and achieve conservation goals. This project aims to establish the role of an important alternative livelihood for fishers - seaweed farming - in reducing fishing pressure and achieving conservation goals on the Danajon Bank in the Central Philippines.

Danajon Bank is a double-barrier reef with conservation priority status in the Philippines: the global centre of marine biodiversity. Local communities are dependent on fishing. It has some of the highest rates of poverty and overfishing in the country. Seaweed farming is one of very few alternatives currently available for local communities and there are provincial governmental plans to quadruple the area being farmed to achieve development and conservation goals. However, with little information on how seaweed farming should be managed in order to reduce fishing pressure, and anecdotal evidence in the literature to suggest that if managed incorrectly it may actually increase fishing, there are concerns over whether this expansion will achieve its conservation potential.

Project Seahorse Foundation for Marine Conservation (PSF), a Filipino NGO dedicated to the conservation of Danajon Bank, is initiating a programme that aims to ensure seaweed farming is managed to reduce fishing pressure with minimal ecological impacts. This project is the first phase of this programme, focusing on working with communities and collecting the socio-economic data needed to inform management and policy on how this can be achieved. Household surveys of 80 households across 2 communities are being conducted weekly using 24-hour recall. These collect information on the level of effort and income for fishing, seaweed farming and other activities to determine the conditions when seaweed farming reduces fishing effort at the household level. We are also examining the factors that influence the effect of seaweed farming on numbers of fishers in 10 communities. The output of this project will be to produce locally relevant management briefings for seaweed farming, and planning documents for how best to focus PSF’s future activities to ensure seaweed farming achieves conservation goals.