Fishers' Needs in Marine Protected Area Zoning: A Case Study from Thailand

Conserving marine ecosystems, while ensuring the livelihood needs of communities, is a challenge for protected area managers worldwide. Multiple-use zoning can help to balance human uses with conservation goals. Developing effective zoning plans requires information on the condition and uses of marine resources and the conflicts among them. Through interviews and participant observation, we investigated residents' reliance on nearshore fisheries in Ko Chang Marine National Park, a designated “no-take” area in eastern Thailand. Approximately 25% of households depended on fishing as their main source of income, with boat owners earning average net wages of 7–68 US$/day in small-scale fisheries. Apparently unaware of restrictions on resource use, small-scale fishers reported working in 95% of the park's marine waters. Understanding the needs and usage patterns of small-scale fishers will help to inform management and zoning plans for Ko Chang and provide a valuable example for other parks in the region.

Keywords:

• marine conservation
• multiple-use zoning
• no-take zones
• small-scale fisheries

The authors thank the fishers and residents of Ko Chang for their help and support. They are grateful to Tom Reimchen, Cliff Robinson, and Surachet Chettamart for their insightful advice, and to Weerasak Yingyuad, Kullatida Muangkhum, Anurak Loogon, Ekkawit Wongsrisung, and Anukorn Boutson for their assistance in the field. The authors appreciate the institutional support of the University of Victoria, Kasetsart University, the National Research Council of Thailand, the Royal Forest Department of Thailand, the Department of Fisheries, and the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Centre, and especially Pongboon Pongtong, Apiwat Sretarugsa, and Sitthichai Seereesongsaeng for their roles in the project. They are thankful for the financial support of the Canadian International Development Agency, the University of Victoria's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and PADI's Project AWARE. Many thanks to Ole Heggen, Jason Miller, and Ian O'Connell for their invaluable technical assistance, and to Marie-Annick Moreau, Michele-Lee Moore, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

^a Villages sharing the same elected leader (or phoo yai) were counted together in this study.

^b The percentage of fishing households accounts for small-and large-scale fishers that earn the majority of their year-round income from fishing.

^c The number of sources given in this column included only people who commented specifically on village demographics and not all of the people interviewed in each village.

^d Aow Chom and Aow Yiemen did not have elected leaders because both communities were established as temporary fishing villages. Information about these villages was, thus, provided only by local residents.

^a Although hook-and-line fishers could not provide information about bait or equipment costs over any unit of time, these costs appeared to be negligible and were therefore counted as zero in this analysis.

^b Given the low sample size for flat-bed boats, the values provided are simply mid-points of the two respondents' answers.

^c Gear replacement costs were standardized to daily costs, by considering the cost of equipment and the frequency with which equipment needed to be replaced.

1. The Department of Wildlife and Plant Conservation came into existence in 2002, following an extensive restructuring of the Royal Thai Government. Prior to 2002, the Marine National Parks Division fell under the Royal Forest Department. Today, marine protected areas are managed under the newly established Department of Wildlife and Plant Conservation, rather than the Royal Forest Department.

2. Longer trips could not be observed using this approach because of the limited battery life of the GPS units. Because only hook-and-line fishers and flat-bed crab boat operators took trips longer than 2 days (see Lunn & Dearden, in press), these were the only fisheries to be affected by the limitations of the GPS-dependent approach.

3. Anchovy purse seine and squid cast net fishers worked overnight, employing luring lights to attract their target species. Large-scale fishing boats could, as a result, be seen from shore, and from our field observations were operating (at least partly) within park boundaries.