Henry Borrebach: Hello! I am Henry Borrebach, host of Reef Exchanges, this still very new podcast from the Reef Resilience Network. For almost 20 years, the network has been a global leader in training marine managers and other practitioners to effectively manage, protect, and restore coral reefs against both local and global stressors like pollution, overfishing, warming and acidifying oceans, and coastal development.
We do this by turning scientific information and in the water experience into operational knowledge, tools, and guidance to help those who are tasked with caring for the world's reefs. This podcast is one of the new ways we're bringing the latest science and strategies to marine managers for effective management of critical coastal areas.
So, without any further ado, let's dive on in!
On this episode, I'll be joined by Kristen Maize, Strategy Lead for the Reef Resilience Network, and Sunny Tellwright, Program Manager for Ocean Technology and Innovation at Conservation International's Ocean Center, as well as MCS Advisor for the Blue Nature Alliance. This episode is brought to you through the network's partnership with the Blue Nature Alliance. Today, we're going to be speaking with Sunny about a topic at the forefront of many manager’s minds, enforcement of marine protected areas—that’s MPAs, an acronym you'll be hearing quite often throughout this conversation. Kristen, I'll hand it off to you to tell us a little more about the Network's efforts on MPA enforcement and to tell us a little more about Sunny, with whom we'll be chatting here shortly.
Kristen Maize: Great. Thanks, Henry. As Henry said, I'm Kristen Maize, Strategy Lead for the Reef Resilience Network. MPA enforcement is a topic that many of our network members want to learn more about, which isn't surprising given how critical enforcement can be to effective coral reef management efforts. An interest in this topic isn't unique to network members. MPA managers, who are part of the Blue Nature Alliance, have also called for support in the area of enforcement. So, to address these needs and support the effective management of MPAs, together, the network and the alliance, we're developing a suite of online resources for marine managers on MPA enforcement, also in collaboration with WildAid. A webinar and case study are going to be produced in the next couple of months, followed by an online toolkit in early 2025.
As part of this process, we've had the pleasure of working with experts like Sunny, who I'm thrilled is joining us for our conversation today. Sunny has had over a decade of experience thinking about fisheries and MPA enforcement, particularly in relation to technological solutions to address marine compliance and enforcement.
Sunny, we can't thank you enough for being with us on this podcast today. Is there anything else you'd like to say about yourself before we start peppering you with questions?
Sunny Tellwright: Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Nothing else to add other than for those that may not be aware, the Blue Nature Alliance is a partnership to catalyze effective and equitable large-scale protections of ocean ecosystems for the benefit of both nature and people.
And we're essentially working to accelerate the momentum towards a global goal of protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, this 30 by 30 goal. So that's what the blue nature Alliance is about. And yeah, my work supporting that deals with. Monitoring control and surveillance. So very happy to be here and discuss these topics. Thank you.
Kristen: Fabulous. Thanks, Sunny. And I'm really happy that you guys are working on the 2030 goals as TNC and many others are too. It's a, yeah, wonderful effort. So, as I mentioned, we've heard from our managers that they would like to learn more about the topic of MPA enforcement. But as we've been digging in and starting to learn more about this topic, we're learning that it's more than just enforcement. It's monitoring, control, surveillance, and enforcement when it comes to MPAs. Could you please break down these components for us and our listeners and just help us understand what they are?
Sunny: Yeah. And thank you for including the enforcement piece in MCS in monitoring control and surveillance because it's often overlooked. But really, these are the four components that collectively help with, monitoring control surveillance and enforcement to ensure the effectiveness of both fisheries management and MPAs. And so whilst I'll speak about each of these components, individual components, really, they are a collective. Like you, you can't have control without monitoring, you can't have surveillance without control, and you can't have enforcement without surveillance. So when we say monitoring, this is really about the data that we need for fisheries managers. to make decisions about catch or areas of operations or marine protected areas.
And this data can include things like fishing logbooks, vessel registration, or if you're monitoring crew, it could include passports or work permits. So monitoring is really about obtaining knowledge of what is happening in an area. Control is about the regulations in place. And so, for marine protected areas, this includes things like boundary controls, zones entry or exit conditions reporting requirements like on VMS, Vessel Monitoring Systems, or things like how the gear is stowed when a vessel may be transiting the area.
Control is really about the regulations in place. So, putting law in place to regulate that area of interest. The third piece is surveillance, and this is really about the observation process. So, what technology is used to observe, and then how frequently. And there can be things like remote surveillance that we're seeing more of lately, things like radar vessel monitoring systems, and AIS, automatic identification systems, and then more traditional surveillance, like inspections, random checks, spot checks or patrols.
So, surveillance is really about checking and inspecting to see if the controls are working, right? There's no use in having controls if you're not looking and checking whether those controls are working. And then lastly, enforcement. This is about the process of making people obey the law. And detecting or having a process to detect if there's non-compliance. And so this can include things like detecting offenses, investigating the procedures for say apprehending offenders, prosecution, and then penalties for non-compliance. And so enforcement is really about investigating and prosecuting those who break the law. And. MCS& E, it may feel like a, an abstract topic, but actually, it's all around us, right? Like, if we're driving, there's traffic police monitoring our speed or our safety. If we are going if we're walking down the street, there may be control processes that are advertised. No smoking here or no alcoholic beverages there. If we're going through customs there may be surveillance there to identify who we are, any risk patterns and passenger movements.
So, really, we're constantly being monitored, areas are constantly being controlled, and surveillance is often in place. And so, if there isn't compliance with these, that's when enforcement will be required. So that's the breakdown of all four, but really, we can think of them collectively as MCS&E.
Henry: I think for my own sake, I'll just want to say the acronym again: MCS&E—monitoring, control, surveillance, and enforcement. On the way to thinking about that more holistically, one of the things that, I've noticed as we've started to learn more about MCS&E is questions around how it's applied across various marine management issues and contexts. Like examples would be thinking about fisheries enforcement versus MPA enforcement or working in near shore versus offshore environments or across very, like, large scale areas versus smaller ones which tend to link, I think, in ways to those fisheries and offshore versus MPAs and nearshore environments or, anywhere across that matrix, but I guess I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about how managers might be considering MCS&E systems in these differing contexts.
Sunny: Yeah, and just broadly MCS&E systems really need to be specific to the country or the area. There is no one stop shop for this. It really needs to be tailored depending on the context. And there are several areas that influence the design of a compliance system and an MCS& E system. One is people. So, what's the demographic of people? What's their income? What's their education? What's the geography, right? What's the environment like? Are there islands? Where are the fish? What's the accessibility to fisheries? What are the weather patterns? Then there's like social and economic factors, like what's the nature of the fishing industry? What are the communities like? Is it small scale or industrial?
And then political factors as well that influence the MCS&E system. Is it a centralized government or a regional government or community management? Is their political will and is their organizational awareness and support for an MCS&E system. So, all of these factors affect the system design, but when we think about fisheries enforcement versus MPA enforcement, fisheries enforcement tends to be more broad in that it includes things like quotas, potentially, or total allowable catches. Or gear controls, like what type of gear can you or can you or can you not use or what modifications in gear the size of fishing vessels, the location where they fish. So, including zoning like NPAs. Seasonal restrictions or day and night restrictions. So, fisheries control and enforcement is, is really broad. It encompasses, many, many different factors. Whereas MPA systems are a component of fisheries. In that MPAs are essentially a zone where you designate what can and cannot happen in terms of fishing. Now, more recently, MPAs encompass broader topics outside fisheries, right, when we're looking at things like deep sea mining.
But in general, I think it's safe to say that MPAs are a subset of fisheries MCS&E systems. In terms of nearshore versus offshore, there is quite a big difference. In terms of your approaches. So, if we go with nearshore, you'd be using systems potentially like patrolling or coastal surveillance. Like maybe there are coastal radar systems or near shore AIS systems. Whereas offshore we're often dealing with. Large scale areas that have different needs and requirements for surveillance. So, with offshore areas, we typically see a lot of satellite surveillance mechanisms being used. So, things like satellite radar satellite tracking devices like VMS, vessel monitoring systems, and AIS, automatic identification systems, and then newer technologies as well, like different spectral surveillance systems.
So those are the main differences between nearshore and offshore in terms of surveillance. In terms of controls, these are likely to be different as well. Especially offshore, you're likely dealing with different fisheries to coastal. And then another important component is how you actually enforce those areas. And this can be very challenging for offshore areas. Because they're often far away and they're large, it may be difficult to get to. And sending a patrol vessel to these areas is extremely expensive, right? Fuel is expensive. The crew and just managing those operations is very expensive. So, enforcing large shore large offshore MPAs comes with unique challenges that are quite Different to nearshore.
Whereas nearshore, the challenge is it may be that it's a local community and you may know the people that are fishing there or used to fish there. So, each has its own complexities, but they vary quite a bit in your approach. But I would just go back to that one size does not fit all. And there are many different areas that influence the design of a compliance system and an MCS& E system.
Kristen: Thanks, Sunny. That was great. You mentioned several key factors that affect the design of an MCS&E system. And a lot of really important challenges, but to expand on this, can you share some advice? For steps that managers can take to tailor their systems to their specific environment and management context. So, really how to take all those factors and potential challenges and translate that into actions that managers can take. Because all those variables can seem pretty overwhelming.
Sunny: Yeah, it is. It is really overwhelming. And I would say there are some fantastic online resources. I mean, this toolkit is going to be tremendous when it's, when it's released online resources include things from the FAO the IUU, sorry, the IPOA IUU suggestions. There are fantastic resources like the IMCS network and WildAid that are experts. In MCS&E they've had compliance officers, fisheries inspectors in their teams. And so working with these types of institutions and looking at online resources is a great way to start because as I've said, there's so many nuances to developing a system and what may work in one region may not work in another. And so that's why I would recommend partnering with these types of organizations as well as looking at whether there are regional workshops and webinars happening so that you can learn from say neighboring countries or even neighboring provinces or counties to share these lessons learned.
By no means managers should be starting from scratch, right? There are resources available. It's just a case of tapping into them and then collaborating to learn from other people and tailoring those recommendations to suit your context and your needs.
Henry: I am actually going to loop back a little bit because one of the things that you mentioned in terms of the different factors that influence these kinds of MCS&E systems you we're talking about like, social and geographic economic and political factors. And one of the things that pops right into my head is one of the sort of centerpieces our Network’s training program is a Resilience-based Management approach and it follows these particular like socioeconomic or sorry, socio ecological, economic and governance dimensions of approaching management. And I just wanted to flag that that feels like a close alignment.
Sunny: I think that's really important when developing any MCS& E system and that takes time, and it goes back to my point of, you can't just take something that works somewhere else and apply it in your context.
There's going to be nuances. And I think there's a lot of factors when dealing with nearshore MPAs that warrant a lot of community engagement, working with the community and co development. Right, we should be moving away from these top-down approaches whereby, MPAs are imposed on communities.
They really need to be co-developed because, a lot of communities rely on coastal fisheries for subsistence and many other things as well. So, I think, over the last decade, we've moved away from top down, approaches. But I would stress the need for community-based approaches, co-development, and that ties into this, co-developing an MCS&E system that is context specific, because if you don't have buy in from the people, it's not going to work. And there's something in the in sort of MCS& E that speaks to this, in that you really want the majority of people to be voluntarily complying with the rules.
There's this thing called VADE [Voluntary Assistance, Direction, and Enforcement]. So, you want most people to voluntarily comply. Then a lesser proportion, they may need additional assistance to comply. And then the D is for direction. There may be lesser still people that need specific direction. And then lastly, the E is you really want to only target a small percentage of people for actual enforcement, right?
Where they're really breaking the rules and that there may need to be penalties for such. So, in this VADE system, Voluntary Assistance Direction and Enforcement, you really want, a lot of people voluntarily complying. And when you take top-down approaches that aren't considerate of the community or the people that rely on those resources, you're not going to get a lot of voluntary compliance.
So yeah, I think to your point, it's essential that a sort of wider approach is taken when developing these systems so that it benefits the people that rely on them, because fundamentally that's what it should benefit. So hopefully that makes sense about the VADE system. And I'm happy to speak to that more.
Kristen: Awesome. Sunny, I'm hoping you can just speak really briefly about the role of technology and MCS&E given this is your area of expertise. And I know a lot of times when people think about this topic, their mind kind of jumps to like technology for a solution. And yeah, just we'd love a little of your insight on this topic.
Sunny: Yeah, I think, I mean, the technology component of surveillance is really exciting. And there's new technologies coming online almost all the time. So now, we've, we've got radar, like satellite radar. We have electro optical imagery, which is basically like a photograph from space we've got infrared detection and then other radio-based frequency detections as well.
So, we can detect, if someone's on a satellite phone or if there's a microwave being turned on the vessel. So, we now have all of these ways to detect what is happening on the water. Whereas over a decade ago, we couldn't see those things. So that's tremendously exciting, but technology is no good if the people that are looking at the data don't understand it, if they're not trained or if they don't have the capacity to action it. Right? Because then you're just producing data for data's sake.
So, even though I work in technology, right, and lead this program, I'm tech agnostic in that it's only as good as the people, really. And really the people is what underpins the success of any MCS&E system, especially the surveillance part. You can have all the satellite detections in the world. But if you don't know how to action it, you don't know how to interpret that data. You don't know how to translate it into actionable data to help with enforcement, then it's not worth the dot on the screen really. So yeah, I think I am tremendously excited about these new technologies. I think it needs to be paired with capacity development and workshops and exchanges so that people really understand these technologies and that it actually helps them rather than just being, points on a screen or some flashy monitoring office that looks great, but, doesn't do what it's set out to do.
Henry: Well, that's a great note to end this on, I believe. And in terms of it really being about the people, I appreciate both of you taking the time to talk with me today, especially sunny for you joining us with your deep expertise that you bring here. As Kristen mentioned earlier, both the network along with Blue Nature Alliance and WildAid and some other partners are working together on this new MPA enforcement toolkit in the coming months here the remainder of 2024.
And I think we're all very excited to share what we pull together once it's ready. But in the meantime, thank you all very much for listening in. You'll be able to find show notes and our other episodes as well as other resources like webinars, toolkits, and case studies at reefresilience.org. And if you aren't already a member, please join the Reef Resilience Network to receive notifications of new resources and podcast episodes like this one. So, thank you again for joining us, and we'll hope you tune in next time. Until then!
