Caribbean billfish best use: food security time bomb, or untapped opportunity for sustainable foreign investment and tourism?
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A 2009 global assessment determined the Western Central Atlantic Ocean, which includes the Caribbean region, to be the most overfished region worldwide (FAO, 2011). This region’s overall harvests also fell from the 30 year average of 1.7 million tonnes, to an average of 1.4 over the last 10 years (Hoydal, 2016). Caribbean nations continue to develop their fisheries targeting large fish that live in open water, also known as pelagic fishes. These efforts typically try to replace harvest reductions from already overfished near shore fish stocks. However, the importance of already overfished billfish species stocks in supporting these fisheries is a regional concern threatening the future livelihoods and food security for millions of Caribbean citizens. Developing fisheries based on harvesting large pelagic fishes using long lines, purse seinne nets and Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) also capture many other species that are already unsustainably overfished. Billfish stocks cannot sustain such fishery developments in the long term, and more effective fishery management is urgently required on national and regional scales to ensure sustainability.
This issue brief provides an overview of the key challenges affecting the billfish industry in the Caribbean and how FAO's Caribbean Billfish Project is helping to address those issues.