One of Adrian Arias’ PhD chapters has just been published online. The article describes the lack of coordination between government, an NGO concerned with sustainable fisheries, and a regional fisheries management organisation (RFMO). Information obtained by the NGO indicated illegal fishing in Costa Rican waters, but the government has yet to react. The article states: “If accurate, these suspected cases of illegal fishing imply a lack of mechanisms to detect, communicate, and act upon incursions. Had the data not been analyzed by the Costa Rican Fishing Federation, the cases presented above, although unconfirmed, would probably have gone undetected.” The article finishes by proposing solutions to the bottlenecks in information flow that led to this situation.

Source for open-access article: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2016.00013/full

Published by Jorge G. Álvarez-Romero

Jorge is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist with a Ph.D. in Systematic Conservation Planning from James Cook University in Australia. With over 15 years of experience in this field, he has led various transdisciplinary projects in terrestrial and marine environments. His work covers multiple topics, such as integrating land-based threats into marine planning, identifying co-benefits from multiple objectives (e.g., downstream benefits in aquatic ecosystems from conservation actions in river basins), enhancing ecological connectivity on conservation networks, and improving collaboration across interests and jurisdictional boundaries. Jorge uses various tools and techniques, including GIS, spatial optimization, spatial modeling, scenario planning, and expert elicitation. Ultimately, he is particularly interested in promoting the integration of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine spatial planning to develop holistic solutions that address complex conservation challenges.

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