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Mesoamerican Reef > The Lobster Expedition
The Lobster Expedition - Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras
Alicia Medina
© WWF
Join WWF’s Alicia Medina – a leader in the Mesoamerican Reef’s Marine Protected Areas Program – in Honduras as she helps create a sustainable future for lobster fishing while also securing a future for this iconic species in the reef ecosystem.
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Days 1-3 | Days 4-6 | Days 7-9 | Days 10-12 | Days 13-15
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One of the conservation challenges throughout the Mesoamerican Reef is overfishing. The Bay Islands of Honduras are no exception and the lobster stocks are suffering as a result. The industrial lobster fleet is centered here and on the Honduran mainland in La Ceiba. We have been working with the industry to get the fishery on a sustainable footing.
Sharing our concern is Darden Restaurants Inc, owner of Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurant chains. Much of the lobster caught here is destined for the dishes served in those restaurants. For this reason, the company is as interested in ensuring a steady supply of lobster as we are in maintaining the biological integrity of the stock. So we decided to conduct an experiment on five lobster fishing boats to test a modified trap design: to assess whether it would curtail the catch of undersized lobster while retaining those of legal size.
Among the most serious threats is catch of juvenile lobsters. So WWF and Darden Restaurants Inc. joined forces last summer to work with the lobster fishing industry to test an environmentally friendly lobster trap designed to curtail the capture of juvenile lobsters – those that are illegal to capture under Honduran law. Five fishing boat owners agreed to make their vessels available for the experiment and with Darden’s financial support WWF was able to design the experiment, train a team of on-board observers and conduct the experiment during the 2007-2008 lobster fishing season.
We completed the experiment at the end of the fishing season, in February 2008, and preliminary results were promising. The fishing industry, however, had concerns about the modified traps, so, with the support of the French Government’s aid agency (FFEM) and USAID, WWF conducted an additional experiment in April/May 2008 to address the outstanding questions that had arisen.
Alvaro Hernandez, Mesoamerican Reef team, Senior Fisheries
Officer. Alvaro is based in Cancun, Mexico.
© WWF
Day 1
The first thing we do today is assemble our team, which includes:
Pablo and I meet up with Alvaro in La Ceiba, on the north coast of Honduras. Alvaro arrived last night by his normal route from Cancun – a “simple” mission that entailed: A flight from Cancun to Flores, Guatemala; landing only a few miles from the Mayan ruins of Tikal; grabbing another flight to Guatemala City; Arriving in San Pedro Sula, Honduras; and from there a final flight to meet us in La Ceiba. Whew!
Mariela Ochoa, Mesoamerican Reef consultant, Honduras office
© WWF
We traveled together by ferry this morning to Roatan Island – about 35 miles offshore – and spent the day working out the details of the design of the experiment and prepared the forms that would be used to record the data.
The point of the experiment is to test seven different trap designs on a total of 56 lobster traps, which are constructed of wooden slats. The challenge has been to ascertain just how wide the opening between the slats should be to allow the undersized lobsters to
Pablo Rico, Mesoamerican Reef team, fisheries technician. Pablo is based in La Ceiba, Honduras.
© WWF
escape but not so large as to allow the legal-sized lobsters to slip away. Each design we are planning to test has an incrementally larger gap between the bottom two slats. The plan is to test them in sets of 7 traps, placing the sets of traps on the sea floor at depths of 90 and 150 feet. All of this is scheduled to take place in Sandy Bay and West End Marine Park – where industrial lobster fishing is prohibited and where there should be plenty of lobsters to observe in and around the traps.
Lobster traps on the dock.
© WWF
Day 2
Alvaro, Pablo and I met the ferry at 8:00 a.m. this morning to offload the shipment of lobster traps that we had arranged to be transported to Roatan from the factory on the mainland. Unfortunately, a cold front came through, the wind was up and the sea was rough so it became impossible to get the traps into the water.
In the meantime, there was plenty of work for us to do to prepare the traps. We picked up the paint and brushes that we needed in order to
Alvaro and Pablo marking the traps.
© WWF
mark the traps and spent the day on the dock, measuring the openings between slats and coding the traps. Nearby, three fishermen were baiting each of the traps with – believe it or not – strips of leather. Apparently, one of the concerns of the fishermen is that predator fish called “vieja” has been entering the environmentally friendly lobster traps and eating the small lobsters. This seems unlikely to us, but we agree to see if it is indeed happening when we dive to observe what’s going with the traps.
The industrial lobster fishing boat Miss Sharika.
© WWF
Day 3
Alvaro, Pablo and I loaded the traps via our pickup onto the fishing boat Miss Sharika at 7:00 a.m. this morning. The boat owner Kenny McNab, his captain, and three fishermen have volunteered to help. The plan was to set the 56 traps in Sandy Bay Marine Park. Unfortunately, on the way to the park we experienced engine trouble. This entailed a two-hour wait for a mechanic.
Once he arrived, he hooked up a new battery to the engine and we were on our way. We were met by Director of Roatan Marine Park, Nick Bach who showed us where we could safely drop the traps without damaging the coral.
Nick Bach, Director, Roatan Marine Park in the skiff.
© WWF
It soon became apparent that the relatively large lobster vessel would not be able to maneuver easily in the small space we had to work in so it wasn’t possible to drop the sets of traps the way the lobstermen typically did – leaving a space of 18 fathoms between traps. We realized we would run the risk of damaging the coral if we continued, so we decided to move to Cordelia Bank, outside the boundary of the park, where there was more room to maneuver. We set half the traps there and planned to set the other 28 traps in the park tomorrow – using a smaller boat. The plan was that we’d dive down and place each trap on the sea floor.
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