Palau To Ban Commercial Fishing In Marine EEZ
Palau’s President Tommy Remengesau Jr. has declared the Pacific nation will become a marine sanctuary, where no commercial fishing will take place.
Palau is an island country located in the western Pacific Ocean, with the country’s population of around 21,000 spread across approximately 250 islands.
According to ABC, Mr Remengesau told a UN oceans conference Palau’s 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone will be a “100 per cent marine sanctuary”, and commercial operations will be banned within their territorial waters.
“We have no choice – the ocean is our way of life,” he said. “It’s our livelihood, it’s our culture, it’s our economy – I always say the economy is our environment and the environment is our economy.”
“You may ask why, why are you doing this? It makes every sense for our sustainability as a people, as an island nation, and as a community.”
Rock Islands, Palau:
Mr Remengesau said his country will promote scuba diving, snorkelling and eco-tourism as an alternative income to commercial fishing. ”We’re not just closing our waters and throwing away the key,” he said.
ABC reports that enforcement of the commercial fishing ban is expected to be a challenge, as the country only has one patrol boat to cover its economic zone which is roughly the size of France.
The Bermuda Government has been considering a proposal to establish a marine reserve to protect a portion of Bermuda’s Exclusive Economic Zone [EEZ], a circle with a 200 nautical mile radius that covers approximately 465,000 square kilometres of ocean.
A progress report for Bermuda posted by the UK Government’s website late last year addressed the Marine EEZ, saying: “This project will likely result in a significant area of our EEZ designated as a no-take zone.
“The true value of such a designation will be in the establishment and effective management of a monitoring and compliance regime to ensure non-compliance is discouraged and or sanctioned.”
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Category: All, Environment
Wow.
Good Idea!
Its scary when tiny nations like Palau make Bermuda’s approach to protection of marine resources seem antiquated.
Recently a tiny minority of the population, in the form of the EEZ stakeholders caucus, set Bermuda back decades in terms of protection of our blue backyard – so unfortunate.
Read a little deeper on this issue. Palau will soon be stopping its licensing of FOREIGN commercial/industrial fishing vessels, after its current contracts expire. (Fishing by locals, to feed themselves and tourists, will continue.) Bermuda has not issued a licence to a foreign fishing vessel to fish our waters since 1994 – that was 20 years ago! We just didn’t make a big deal of it, although it was not as much of a sacrifice since our economy was not dependent on the money from such licences. It just made sense.