Requiem for the Galápagos sea cucumber fishery

Abstract

Since 1998, the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR) has been managed under a participatory and adaptive management scheme. The Participatory Management Board (PMB), locally known as “Junta” (Toral-Granda and Martinez 2004; Altamirano et al. 2004), includes the five members of the management board, who are directly involved in activities within the GMR: fishing, nature guides, tourism (Galapagos Tourism Chamber – CAPTURGAL), science/conservation (Charles Darwin Foundation – CDF), and the Galapagos National Park Service (GNPS) as the administrator of the GMR. In the PMB, decisions are consensusbased and later analysed by the Interinstitutional Management Authority (IMA). The IMA comprises different stakeholders at the national government level: Ministry of Environment (Chair), Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Fisheries, CEDENMA (Ecuadorian Committee for the Protection of the Environment), as well as some local users: Galapagos Chamber of Tourism, fishing sector, and GNPS (Secretary). The CDF acts as the scientific advisor for the IMA, and is primarily responsible for advising managers of the fishery on the state of the sea cucumber population in the GMR. In the IMA, all decisions are made by voting, and later put into effect by the GNPS (for further detail, see Altamirano et al. 2004, Toral-Granda and Martinez 2004).