ICT4SSF Toko Telo Discussion

Super interesting questions. Thanks, everyone for attending. Over the next few days our team will try to answer some of the above questions here in discussion, but please feel free to engage here already with any additional thoughts or insights

Chris Kastern and Greg Duggan I am wondering if you guys want to take a stab at the last one, with e.g. our C_FIP and the stock assessment?

Answers from our team in Madagascar:

How long does it take to work with fishers to agree to a no take zone/closure?

It can take at least one year; we may have also a mirror reflection process that can influence a neighboring villages.

How many data collectors do you need?

Basically we need at least two data collector per village as buddy and it may increase based to village size area. So we need (50 + 45 data collectors).

Do you find data feedback is enough of an incentive to engage fishers? Are there any experiences of fishers refusing to engage because they don’t want to use their time for this?

Yes, that's enough for instance until we run it regularly. We may have another recommendation from fisher.

What knowledge do fishers need to understand their own data? Resource management is complex!

A basic data analysis result lecture and information about national law.

How do these initiatives impact social equity (e.g. access to resources, gender equity etc)?

For gender equity, we engage a lot woman to do the data collection. So it gives job for local community and new skill about digitalisation.

In Madagascar how do fishers react to undersize/underweight or berried lobsters being caught?

It's quite similar to octopus in the SW , it's difficult for someone to put back once they have it, and there are some markets for these. So even if more responsible companies don't collect someone will.

If there are undersized or berried lobsters in their pots, the fishers will keep them. Though fishers are aware of the national regulations against catching undersized and berried lobsters, once they catch something there will always be a use for it, whether as food or to sell. In the past, people would scrape the eggs off of berried female lobsters on the beach or at sea so that they could still sell them. Now, collectors will purchase the berried females even with the eggs, and they'll purchase undersized lobsters to a certain degree too. So as long as there is a use for the lobsters, people will catch them because it is very difficult to forfeit food and/or income and put them back.

How can we invest in monitoring where the scale of our work doesn’t match the scale of the fishery / stock?

By including fisher and local NGO or partner acting on fishery. This is, I think the main key to spread faster data collection around the cost of Madagascar.

Thank you Nestin and Blue Ventures' partner SEED!

Hi guys, thanks for hosting an excellent discussion! Would you be able to share a link to the video that was shown during the event? Cheers!

Thank you Valerie! You can find all the materials from the event, including a recording of all the whole event here. I will get our team to add a link to the standalone video too.
https://tokotelo.blueventures.org/past-events/#11

Thanks Abigail! If you have an external link to this video that might be easier to share/promote :-) Best, Valerie

Fantastic, thank you Abigail! Best, V