Yet another stellar pic by Allen!
Very nice.
Read this!
So the cat is out of the bag: the management committee for Fiji's first National Marine Park will comprise Aisake Batibasaga from the Department of Fisheries as representative of Government, with full ultimate decision authority; Ian Campbell, Manager of the Pacific Shark Programme, a joint initiative between WWF and TRAFFIC as the representative of civil society; Juerg Brunnschweiler and Ciro Rico as the representatives of academia; and finally yours truly as the representative of BAD which has been tasked with the day-to-day management of the park.
We are all Shark divers, have all dived the SRMR multiple times and are all uniquely equipped to make the best decisions for safeguarding the long-term future of the SRMR but above all, that of its priceless Shark population - so the future looks bright indeed!
One last word about the management model.
This public/private partnership is truly ground-breaking, and I sure hope that the delegates at the upcoming IUCN World Parks Congress are going to take notice. As an example for its practical application, the governments of lesser developed countries could deputize the local staff of those countless beach resorts whereby they could monitor the resorts' foreshore and apprehend any poachers etc; or mutatis mutandis, the same powers could be bestowed upon those liveaboard vessels plying the remote waters of Raja Ampat or e.g Cocos, Malpelo and the Galapagos - and the list goes on and on and on! In brief, the private operators would be investing their resources into defending their most precious business assets whilst relieving those resource-strapped governments from part of their burden.
Talk about a big win-win for everybody involved, and especially for marine conservation!
So here's to this model being quickly adopted elsewhere.
Fingers crossed!
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