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The Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) has reviewed the recently released Government document, A Strategy For The Sustainable Use Of Bermuda's Living Marine Resources.

BEST gives it high marks for its comprehensive and eco system-based approach to the island's living marine resources. It is an ambitious undertaking, one that is perhaps overly dependent on adequate allocation of funds and personnel for research, monitoring and enforcement.

However, that is no reason not to make an attempt.

With greater attention to a collaborative process, the strategy could represent a model for the "management" of all the island's natural resources.

It begins with good, up-front recognition of the dire situation facing fisheries globally and of increasing and sometimes conflicting local demands.

We concur with the management of fish stocks theme. We applaud the spatial management plan with emphasis on the entire 200-mile EEZ. Though long overdue, this is a very good development.

We support the focus on entire habitat management, not just targeted species.

There are many studies to support this concept and lots of experience to draw on for implementing it. Hopefully, this will mean an expansion of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that could make them more effective.

Bermuda must now be thinking about larger, consolidated MPAs because fragmented areas may be unenforceable, even with boosted enforcement personnel and patrol vessels.

Eco system-based management still has unanswered questions.

While the strategy proposes spatial management as the mechanism, adaptive management may require more information.

We wonder what kind of eco system monitoring (not just target species) will be done to stay abreast of any changes in the broader ecosystem due to warming or coral disease and so on.

Such changes could cause shifts in the locations of spawning aggregations, for example, that may require a swift response to maintain protection during vulnerable periods.

We applaud the concepts of investigating commercial harvests of lionfish and promoting aquaculture.

A lionfish fishery is a novel approach but enforcement of any related regulations is a key issue - the intent of other environmental and planning laws have been hobbled by inadequate or lax enforcement.

Benefits

Justification for any local aquaculture operation will need to go further than balancing financial and environmental benefits and costs. If the costs are too high and the effects are irreversible, no amount of benefit may be justified.

The task of managing marine resources mirrors issues of maintaining civil order in our community.

The strategy says that "over time the workload and responsibilities of fisheries wardens have increased considerably without a concomitant increase in salary or manpower".

As our community has become more densely populated, the demands on regulatory mechanisms and personnel have increased disproportionately.

At the same time, costs of living and of regulating have also increased.

The law of diminishing returns would suggest that at each step of implementation, an effective strategy is going to extract progressively higher costs.

Our approach at the moment seems to assume we have the resources and the will to mount whatever analysis and oversight might be called for. Such an approach is unsustainable.

We also have concerns about the process.

The strategy points to a "need for management to develop a better relationship with the public, to improve communications and to engender a greater sense of responsibility for the marine environment".

We agree and think an opportunity has been missed to engage the public prior to the publication of the strategy. Going forward, we must ask if comments now being requested from the public will be used, once received, to amend and improve the strategy, or is it already set in stone?

There has to be a strong commitment to public consultation accompanied by assurances feedback will be transparently incorporated into the strategy before it becomes policy.

The model used to produce the strategy was extensively consultative.

We need more of this type of model to ensure the public's engagement.

Ownership and responsibility is generated at the beginning of developing any strategy - at the conceptualisation and drafting stage.

Grassroots

Broad inclusion is paramount. The willingness to get consensus and cooperation between fishermen and Government is a positive thing.

It is imperative that other interest groups are given the same ear. Grassroots organisations obviously have a lot to offer.

The authors state that results of strategy-related research programmes will be shared with stakeholders on a regular basis but it would be good to hear that information will also be made available to the public in the spirit of PATI.

This is particularly true for the report on what is now called "Phase 1" of the 2007 study on longlining.

There can be no reason for further delay in releasing this report.

Comments in the strategy suggest a decision in favour of longlining has been made. If so, the strategy is inviting mistrust and resistance.

Calls for consultation on this issue are undermined when arguments for longlining are being put forward while information on the study of same is being kept under wraps.

Overall, we feel this is an excellent start to what must be a sustained effort of a complex process.

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