No lobsters for 4 months

This started a few ago, if I recall...........

To protect the breeding season

Good. How would anyone like it if you were trying to get your freak on and someone shows up with a net, catches you and put you in a glass tank for someone to pick you to be cooked in boiling water...They are mighty tasty though:cheeky::cheeky::cheeky::cheeky:

I had some the other night at Don Pedros in Santiago

This should be fascinating. As i sit at the bar on the beach where i work, i will look for any of the several guys whom walk up and down the beach everyday selling lobsters. This could get interesting. I will take pictures if i see any lobsters and ask them if they are aware of the ban?

Frank

Kudos to the Dominican government. Now that the ban has been announced, we can only hope that it will be duly enforced. It is nothing but a common sense approach to ocean management which is the responsibility of any country with access to the world's oceans.
........Baby steps and better late than never and all that stuff.

I did a semester aboard in Turks and Caicos Islands on Spiny Lobster Fishery Management. Pretty tricky stuff because you can come up with all kinds of regulations and ideas, but unless you can make it in the fishermen's interest to follow them, it's impossible to enforce. Lobster fisheries can and do crash due to over-exploitation, but due to the life-cycle of the lobsters, they can recover locally quickly in a few years. Monitoring the size distribution of the catch is considered to be the most effective way of determining the health of the stock on a year-to-year basis.

The practice of a prohibiting fishing during breeding season does very little to protect the Dominican fisheries directly. The larvae are planktonic for a year more, so anything hatched in the DR will drift toward Cuba and the entire Caribbean cycles around in big loop. It takes about six years for lobsters to reach harvest size(carapace length of 3.5") after they have completed the planktonic part of their life cycle.

It can help to improve "recruitment" of larva. The larva need micro-shelters to first cling to, then find refuge as they convert to coastal habitats. This can be as simple as piles of thin cinderblocks with gaps that they can hide in. Only about 1% of all eggs will make it to the larval stage, and of those perhaps only another 1% will make it to the adult stage. Some countries use artificial floating devices to attract the larva generically called FADs(Fish Aggregating Devices), which, for lobster larva, are made from fibrous material that they can easily cling to.

Cuba has one of the best managed lobster fisheries because the fishermen work for the government with a fixed wage to harvest a set number of lobster. Because the fishermen make the same regardless of their catch, there is no "Tragedy of the Commons" situation where as the resource becomes depleted, there is a greater incentive to exploit it more because it has become more valuable. They have a good fishing system where they have small garage like structures the lobsters can hide in from predators.When the boats come, they lift the structures after surrounding them with nets.

One of the biggest problems with the DR fisheries is they still allow lobster traps made of non-degradable materials. When a trap is lost(which is frequent), it continues to attract lobsters who get trapped and then die inside. These "ghost traps" can continue to work for decades, if not longer. Because lobsters are scavengers, the trap continues to re-bait itself. Even without bait, the traps attract lobsters because it provides shelters from predators.

I was hoping to do a project in the Turks and Caicos Islands making lobster shelters using wooden pallets weighted with thin cinderblocks, but I broke a rib within a week after I got there, and it limited my activities too much.

One of the issues in the Turks was all of the legal lobster fishing is done by snorkel diving. This has some great advantages in providing refuge for the lobsters, but the fishermen often damage the reefs by using bleach in water bottles to flush the lobsters out of their shelters. I was trying to come up with a low cost system similar to the Cuban fisheries system using materials at hand. Could be a great way of expanding the range of habitat for the lobsters because there are vast areas of flats where the lobsters can't go because there is no shelter. It could also be a good location for a product called "Reef Ball"



Reef Ball Foundation: Getting Grants For Your Project

PUNTACANA Ecological Foundation

In 2008, PESCA began a pilot experiment, using 20 “lobster casitas” as a way to sustainably harvest local populations of Caribbean Spiny Lobsters. The objective of the project is to create a culture of sustainable lobster harvesting with local fishermen while simultaneously restoring lobster populations on the reef. The casitas are simple concrete structures that attract lobsters. Fishermen are then easily able to capture the lobster from underneath the casitas without exploiting the reef. In exchange for the permission to use the lobster casitas, the fishermen agree to respect no-fishing zones and seasons, to respect set size limits and to return lobsters with eggs to the reef.

In 2007, two fishermen exchanges were conducted with fishermen from Sian Ka-an, Mexico. Mexican fishermen who have successfully implemented lobster casitas visited Punta Cana to explain the economic and environmental benefits of lobster casitas. Later, Dominican fishermen visited the same fishermen in Mexico to see firsthand how sustainable management of lobster casitas had restored local populations and improved their livelihoods.

In 2008, working with local fishermen, 20 lobster houses were constructed and distributed near the reef in front of PUNTACANA Resort & Club. The Ecological Foundation has since received a grant from Fundaci?n Ademi to expand the project and continue the work with local fishermen.

Click to expand...

Cool.

Florida made Casitas illegal because they thought they were making lobsters too easy to catch and that the structures damaged sea grass too much. But now they are reconsidering because they have become popular in the Bahamas and other areas for years with no apparent harm. When shelters are limited, the lobsters are easily picked off by dolphins and other predators. Those antennae don't really do much for defense in the open. Again, the real need is for juvenille lobsters since they have a HUGE mortality rate. By the time a lobster has reached harvest size, it's already beaten the odds by at least 10,000 to 1.

FADs have been around for centuries, but there is still a great deal of controversy whether they have positive or negative impacts on sustainability. They are all over in Hawaii for attracting game fish and are funded by the government. Part of the problem is that FADs are often made from junk instead of being actually engineered.

I commend the idea of a law to stop lobsters from being caught in breeding times and I hope they do a better job of enforcement than they do for the people running red lights

The breeding season ban is an interesting "feel good" measure, but I doubt it actually has much effect on the sustainability of the lobster stocks in the Caribbean. The DR isn't enforcing minimum catch size which actually benefits the fishermen on the long run by increasing the yield weight per lobster. But it's very hard to convince a fisherman that they should toss back a small lobster they've caught because one day it will be worth more money. Many lobstermen actually use "shorts" to bait their traps.

Someone did a study on the catch in the Turks and they found that 75% of the lobsters being processed were below legal size. Since the DR tends to fish with traps, these can designed to allow undersized lobsters to escape and prevent "oversized" lobsters from entering the traps. If you are going to get into enforcement, regulating/certifying traps is a good place to start.

Ideally, the Gov should simply produce "legal" traps for the fishermen at cost or slightly below what it would cost them to make "illegal" traps. Again, traps should be made so that if they are lost, they have a section that deteriorates in a few years. Fishermen lose about 5% of their traps per year, so there are far more "ghost traps" out there than ones that are actually harvested from.

One thing I'd like to experiment with someday is to make some casitas out of wooden building pallets. Can be made from locally available and free materials and may also attract other fish.

The case for "slot limits"

Lobster Slot Limit: The argument for both minimum and maximum size limits for California Spiny Lobster fishing

It's really difficult to tell a poor guy he can't do what he does to feed his family, sound reasoning or not.

I mean, if a law isn't enforced does it even exist?

There is a lobster season in bermuda and you also need a licence to catch them then again that is Bermuda were there are rules and this is the DR were the only rule is there are no rules !!

"Help Me I'm FLOATING????"

Peter, the wooden pallets are made of the cheapest wood available.
I don't think they would be be a good choice, as their "Life" under salt water would be short.
Not to be a "Smart A$$" :cheeky::cheeky::cheeky:
But do you intend to "Hold the pallets underwater???:laugh::laugh::laugh:
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The DR has a LOT of junk car frames,they work well as "Artificial Reefs".
New York City strips it's retired subway cars and dumps them off shore to attract marine life.
"OH!" I Almost forgot!
Is there ANYONE, who actually believes that this "Regulation" will be enforced here in the Dominican Republic????
The DR, goes along with all the "GREEN" "PC", regional, and international "Laws/Regulations".
ON PAPER, and in their Rhetoric, but NEVER in REALITY!
They just want to stnd up at international Forums and "POINT" to their compliance.
Frank can post pictures of all the lobsters being "Protected in Cabarete"
Just before being eaten by a "Tourista"!
Just like the "Seatbelt, Helmet, no Cell Phone "LAWS"!
This will be used to "Punish" a few poor fisherman, while tye "Policia" confiscate they "catch" and have a great "Lobster Dinner" later that afternoon!

I'd use thin cinder blocks or concrete slabs on the bottom layer for ballast and ideally spay them with a skim coat of a bio-friendly cement that coral can grow on like Reef Balls. Even with a five year life-span, they would be cost-effective, since they are practically free. If the concrete remains after the wood rots, it would even better. You'd have to anchor them in areas where there are strong currents, but other studies have found that even in storms homemade casitas don't move around that much.

I'm expecting that algae and other material would grow on the pallets. That's stuff the lobsters can eat and it would attract other critters.

Yes, I know cars and other junks have been used for FADs and reefs. There is extensive use of homemade casitas in Bermuda and other islands where the most popular material is corrugated metal roof panels weighted down with rocks. Junk car hoods are also popular. These are illegal in FL, but they are reconsidering the laws.

I spent four months in the Turks and Caicos Islands on a Study Abroad program and talked to numerous local fishermen about the pallet idea. They were pretty interested in it and I would have built a couple prototypes at the time, but I had a broken rib which limited my activities too much. Their main concern was other fishermen would steal their stacks, but then I said it would easier to build a stack than steal someone else's. The wooden pallets are EVERYWHERE on the island I was on as are cinder blocks.

The casitas they use in Cuba are 6'x6' 5" slabs of concrete supported a few inches above the sea floor with 6" PVC pipes. Each one can cluster 100 or more lobsters underneath. They surround the casitas with nets then the boat above lifts the casita up and they catch the lobsters as they try to flee.

ReefBall is also developing habitat for lobsters. They are doing a "layer cake" design, but each one costs over $100 to build and you need to tow them to the final location. It's another good idea, but not one that local fishermen can produce on their own. I also think they are limited in how many they can shelter: