Ten communities in the New Ireland Province have engaged in developing their fisheries management plans.
The communities live on Tigak and Tsoi Islands and have been working with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Papua New Guinea program to sustainably manage their marine resources.
WCS New Ireland’s fisheries management team conducted four workshops across these communities to forge fisheries management plans in January and February.
The main aim of the workshops was to get community leaders approval on the management rules to be included in their plans.
Their plans outline prohibiting destructive fishing practices, closing fish spawning aggregation sites and minimum size limits.
Other initiatives include no-take areas and rotational harvesting of some invertebrates.
WCS Fisheries Advisor, Dr Sven Frijlink said that for each community the management proposals were framed around key fisheries with spin-off benefits to other fisheries.
He added that the management process commenced with information sessions on fisheries ecology and management needs followed by the identification of locally important fisheries.
Other ‘steps’ in the process involved focus group sessions for important fisheries, socioeconomic surveys and community surveys of preferred management options for key fisheries.
WCS will continue to work with the 10 villages to provide advice, train data collectors and deploy FADS.
All management plans are expected to be completed next month and will be reviewed every five years.