Moving beyond a top-down fisheries management approach in the northwestern Mediterranean: Some lessons from the Philippines

Status, trends and challenges in the sustainability of small-scale fisheries in the Philippines: Insights from FISHDA (Fishing Industries' Support in Handling Decisions Application) model

“…Due to financial and logistical challenges, successful MPA establishment in the Philippines has to be done in consultation with the local community, while upholding transparency and equitable sharing of costs and benefits, in order to encourage local participation and volunteerism in coastal resource management activities [15,21]. Studies have shown that successful coastal resources and fisheries management is often achieved in community-based managed areas where there are strong community support and unity along with leadership with strong political will [22][23][24].…”

Quantification of bottom trawl fishing damage to ancient shipwreck sites

“…However, MPAs can serve multiple purposes. In the Mediterranean, many of the MPAs have been designed primarily to protect benthic habitats and biodiversity, rather than specifically to increase fisheries, which is a common goal of such established areas (Arceo et al, 2013). We have shown that trawlers operating off Turkey deliberately adhere to established, trawl-regulated areas along the coast, indicating that MPAs established in Turkish waters can be enforced.…”

“…Mediterranean capture fisheries have been on a sharp decline since the 1980s, and MPAs specifically designed to increase the fisheries have been proposed and attempted on a small scale (Arceo et al, 2013). Shipwrecks make excellent artificial reefs by providing safe havens for juvenile species to hide, especially the hard substrate offered by the ceramic cargos of ancient shipwrecks (Krumholz and Brennan, 2015).…”

Can institutional change theories contribute to the understanding of marine protected areas?

“…Summarizing the Philippines' experience with marine protection, Arceo et al (2013) explain that the first response of the government in the 1970s to confront the decreasing fish catches was to increase fishing efforts. This measure evidently did not yield the expected results, so in the 1990s the government moved to protection strategies and decentralized fisheries management.…”

“…Two small MPAs based on community management became case studies and inspired many of the innovations of the Local Government Code. Furthermore, the country had community management experience over marine resources before the Spanish colonization in the 17th century (Arceo et al, 2013). After realizing that the centralized approach was not working (poor surveillance and low compliance) -providing suitable conditions for change (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010) -actors pushed for change drawing from a model they were familiar with.…”