By: Staff Writer
November 7, 2023
A University of the West Indies professor said fisher-folk can earn alternative incomes by bringing fisheries to them if they work with new techniques like the Anchored Fish Aggregating Device (AFAD).
Dr Henri Vallès, senior lecturer in ecology at the UWI Cave Hill campus, told Caribbean Magazine Plus on the side-lines of the 76th Gulf & Caribbean Fisheries Institute Conference that the AFAD is important because it will attract the fish to wherever the device is anchored, making it easier for fisher-folk to catch fish. This is important because it will save time and resources of fisher-folk by having hard to catch, deep-water fish come to them rather than them hunting the fisheries in the open water.
Dr Vallès also said: “it is important because it provides an alternative income for fishers, particularly in locations where coastal resources maybe over exploited for instance, and traditionally there has been one of the main reasons as to why many islands have engaged in flat-fishing. This provides an alternative source of fishes, so you’re fishing on the coast, you’re going to be catching your parrot fishers, snappers, groupers. But AFAD allows fishers to have access to pelagic resources like tunas, dolphinfish allows them to go deeper than that. That’s the advantage of them is that you don’t have to go too far. When you have AFAD it attracts the fish.”
The science on how AFAD attracts the fish is unknown and there are “multiple theories.” However, the anchor acts as a reference point for fish and they begin to school around the anchor or meeting point. Then, when more fish see the schools hanging out at the same location, they begin to migrate to the same spot every time.
For sustainable fisheries AFAD is very important. Dr Vallès said: “The issue is that obviously it needs to be managed like any other fishery and I raised a number of issues that have raised concern in the past about the use of AFAD, but it can be used effectively.
“If you have a fishery based on some of the species that are available and are adequately managed, then you are again providing an alternative source of income to fishers, particularly when you think about climate change and how coastal fisheries may be affected by climate change, but just the power of AFAD may help actually mitigate some of those effects.”
A regional plan for AFAD implementation has been finished and it is just waiting to be endorsed by the various governments around the region. “It just needs to be translated and published,” he said.