Hillsborough, Carriacou, June 14th, 2016 – Members of the Carriacou Fisher Folk Inc., led a different kind of fishing expedition over the weekend of June 11th and 12th 2016.
Their mission was not to catch fish, but rather, to create new fishing aggregating sites to respond to the depleting fishing grounds caused by climate change and overfishing.
On both days the fishers headed out to sea from the Harvey Vale area carrying skilfully made hand crafted devices including anchors made up of old oil drums laden with concrete and boulders, many miles of ropes, tarpaulin and different kinds of buoys.
From the Thursday June 8th the fishers came together in a special training to build what is referred to as Fishing Aggregating Devices (FADs).
FAD is the new craze amongst fishers which is a device that is anchored in the middle of the ocean to attract fishes of all sizes.
The local FAD expert from Petite Martinique, Mr. Howard Mitchell conducted the building and deployment of the FADs.
Two FADs were deployed on the western end of Carriacou on the Saturday and two more were deployed on the Sunday on the eastern end of Petite Martinique. They were equipped with radar reflectors and lights to warn other maritime users and the locations were approved by Fisheries Division and Ports Authority.
The Carriacou Fisher Folk Cooperative is based in L’Essterre and is aimed at increasing resilience to Climate Change by improving fishing techniques in Carriacou and Petite Martinique.
Their FAD project is one of the 29 community climate change projects that received funding through the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and the Environment Integrated Climate Change Adaptation Strategies (ICCAS) Projects.
The ICCAS project, is funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) within its International Climate Initiative (IKI), it is implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Forestry, Fisheries and Environment, UNDP and GIZ
