koo<\/em> in Kiswahili, uses all her bodily resources when brooding eggs, and rarely survives for long after the young have hatched.<\/p>\nMany things have changed, however, in KisiwaPanza over the last 25 years and all is not well with the octopus population. Traditional sticks for hunting have now been replaced with more efficient hooked iron rods, and many men who fish now have access to masks and fins to fish for octopus in deeper waters. Some even use scuba gear. The fishing pressure has increased as the local village population has grown, together with the burgeoning demand for export. Today, fewer fishers take rest on the traditional days, continuing instead to fish throughout the month. The mature female octopus is being fished out of her breeding den and young octopus seldom get the chance to grow much beyond 500 grams, a size too small for breeding.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the day octopus is one species that can rebound relatively quickly with the right management regime. This is because they grow so fastthey are capable of doubling their size in just two months, and reaching 12 kg in 18 months. Thus if the fishing pressure is removed for just two to three months, the resulting catch is convincing and the females get a chance to breed undisturbed for the required length of time for the eggs to hatch. This management model has been adapted to good effect in recent years in Madagascar and Rodrigues in Mauritius.<\/p>\n
The island of KisiwaPanza lies within the Marine Managed Area known as PECCA (Pemba Channel Conservation Area). Discussions among the Smartfish programme of the Indian Ocean Commission, the Mwambao Coastal Community Network, Fauna & Flora International, PECCA and KisiwaPanza community members began in November 2014, and the community decided to pilot this approach. These partners have also been working with communities and authorities to build the capacity of the local fisheries committees so that they may play an active and legitimate role in governance and management of all of their marine resources.<\/p>\n
The villagers selected 60 hectares for closure, also known as a no-take zone (NTZ) and a sub-committee was formed to patrol the area for three months. As members of Mwambao, we trained monitors to record the catch and capture any increases in production. We also worked with the sub-committee and with PECCA staff to create by-laws and to carry out awareness-raising campaigns in neighbouring villages. Women had a major role in deciding on the timing of the NTZ; they suggested that lifting the closure in the expensive month of Ramadan would really help with all the additional costs at this timein effect, the reserve would act as an octopus \u0091bank.’ The closure began with village approval in mid-March and everything progressed according to plan, with only one minor poaching incident reported. The community decided that, at the opening, no hooked metal rods but only the traditional sticks would be used, giving the smaller immature octopus a greater chance of surviving.<\/p>\n
This is the first pilot closure for octopus in the islands and it is a valuable demonstration of successful collaborative management for the Marine Conservation Unit and PECCA authorities. The Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development officially cut the ribbon at Ngazi on the 2 of July and everyone was encouraged by the outcome.<\/p>\n
Not all of the 600 or so fishers managed to catch an octopus but there were lively discussions about increasing the fishery closure area next time. Octopus \u0091banks’ are an exciting first step towards building capacity and engagement at the village level to improve the management of their fisheries.<\/p>\n
Mwambao hopes to expand this initiative to more villages in 2016 and to also increase the \u0091bank deposit’, as it were, in KisiwaPanza, by helping them extend the area of the temporary no-take zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":191,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"region":[],"source":[],"country":[],"state":[],"city":[],"yemaya_category":[5271],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yemaya\/45723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yemaya"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/yemaya"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yemaya\/45723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65759,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yemaya\/45723\/revisions\/65759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=45723"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=45723"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=45723"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=45723"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=45723"},{"taxonomy":"yemaya_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yemaya_category?post=45723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}