Galapagos Marine Reserve + Marine Related Topics

    Founded in March 1998, the Galapagos Marine Resereve is managed by a the Galapagos National Park Service along with local stakeholders. This group is under the authority of four ministries from the Ecuadorian government, along with three stakeholdergroups (tourism, fisheries, and a science/biodiversity/education group). Along with the establishment of the Reserve as a protected area, the boundary of the reserve was increased to 40 miles around the Galapagos archipelago, inside of which only tourism and "artisanal" fishing is allowed. Industrial fishing is not allowed in the Reserve (Bensted-Smith). Around 1200 fishermen currently are allowed to fish in Reserve area. However, they may not fish on the 17% of the coastline designated as "no-take" zones (UNESCO).
    Illegal fishing is obviously still a problem. Many conflicts have arisen over complaints of the abuse by fisheries. Fishing boats are found illegally fishing in the Reserve on a regular basis, and it seems that their is a lack of resources to effectively police the area. In September of 2002, there were only two patrol boats policing the large area that makes up the Reserve (BBC). These boats are manned by personnel from the Ecuadorian Navy as well as park rangers. Unfortunately, there have been instances where the Navy has released boats that were seized for illegal fishing, which implicates the government in the illegal fishing trade. Furthermore, the government stance has been weak against the undying pressure from the fishing industry to increase the fishing quota, which doesn't help the environmental aspect of the fishing issue. All this combined has made the status of the marine environment a threatened one (UNESCO).

http://db.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/nature_20020923.shtml
http://www.darwinfoundation.org/articles/n5900049816.html
http://whc.unesco.org/archive/advisory_body_evaluation/001bis.pdf

FUTURE:  - useful to know how much of a police force there is now
                 - permit needed for fishing? how easy to obtain? - ask Pete if he knows


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