Development of collaborative community-based management prescriptives for the Torres Strait Indigenous bêche-de-mer and trochus fisheries (T1.9)
Ms Anna Prichard, CRC Reef/ James Cook University

Instigating community-based programs that assist Indigenous fishers to develop an understanding of the scientific principles, techniques and underlying reasons for collection and analysis of fisheries data; and how the resulting data influences subsequent fisheries management decisions may be invaluable to Torres Strait Islanders and their communities in the future. To date, there has been little participation and support from Torres Strait community members of existing community-based fisheries management programs.

This research will identify the reasons for the low level of participation of Torres Strait Islanders in existing community-based fisheries management programs and develop alternative, appropriate and innovative techniques to conducting community-based fisheries consultation, education and management programs in the region. The proposed solutions will be designed to maintain ongoing effective participation and consultation between Islander fishers and other stakeholders, and establish capacity building and empowerment within the Torres Strait Islander fishing communities. The Torres Strait bêche-de-mer and Trochus fisheries will be used as a pilot study to test whether alternative proposed community-based fisheries management approaches are effective. If these methods prove successful these techniques could be applied to other Torres Strait fisheries that Islander fishers depend on.

Objectives

• Collate, review and comment on methods that have been used for community-based consultation, education, stock assessment and management programs in Torres Strait.
• Identify and analyse the reasons why Torres Strait Islanders opt not to participate in such programs initiated in the Torres Strait;
• Develop educative orientated techniques applicable to the Torres Strait bêche-de-mer and trochus fisheries.
• Develop community-based stock assessment, management, monitoring and audit strategies for the Torres Strait bêche-de-mer and trochus fisheries, and criteria for the assessment and evaluation of these strategies; and
• Develop a management framework to deliver community-based fisheries programs in Torres Strait.

Outcomes

• Establish a framework and procedures for Government stakeholders to adopt collaborative approaches with Islander communities/ fishers during preparing fisheries stock assessments, monitoring and management plans.
• Adoption of a community-based participation approach empowering Torres Strait Islanders with the knowledge and skills necessary to actively contribute to fisheries stock assessments and formulating management plans of fisheries resources that they harvest.
• The community-based management prescriptives to be developed in collaboration with Indigenous fishers for the ETS bêche-de-mer and Trochus fisheries will work towards establishing sustainable harvesting of these fisheries.
• The participating communities and CI will jointly evaluate the success of the methods used to prepare each of the projects and identify whether alternative techniques could be utilised that would produce superior results.