 and welcome. The Sofra Marine and Management Association was established in 1995 by Cabinet Conclusion and subsequently it was registered as a non-profit. It has as its mission to contribute to national and local development, particularly in the fisheries and tourism sectors. Hi, my name is Vojilianti and here with me to discuss the plans, the achievements and the activities of the Sofra Marine Management Association is its president-chairman, Mr. Harold Dalso. Welcome, Mr. Dalso. Pleasant morning to you. It's a pleasure to be here to discuss issues relating to the SMMA Sofra Marine Management Authority. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Well, first you could start by telling us, giving us a little brief description of the SMME. Well, the SMMA started out of community consultation and discussion from the way back in 1995. There was the need to look at your marine resource and its attributes, its ecosystem, and then try to manage it in a sustainable way to create livelihoods for people, making it sufficiently attractive to create a kind of diversification to our tourism product. So that this marine space becomes a tourist attraction in itself. And for that to happen, you have to have some management authority, some management instrument in place, hence the creation of the SMMA. Okay. You speak about the marine conservation. Could you just elaborate a bit on that? What does it entail? Okay. The same way we have our beautiful waterfalls, we have the surface springs, we have all of the beautiful sites in this country. Marine life is equally beautiful. In fact, there is no more beauty in the marine area in under the water than you probably will find on land. And if we are able to take a good look at it and identify the areas that are sufficiently attractive and develop them and then make it attractive to visitors, then what is going to happen? People are going to come to St. Lucia, visitors will come to St. Lucia, not only for the sea and the sun and the sun and the hotels, but they are going to come to go into the reserve, to the diving, to snorkel, to do all kinds of marine related activities. Wonderful. So how much progress have you made and what are some of the challenges you have encountered in trying to conserve that marine life? Like anything else, when something has started and people do not understand it, there tends to be a lack of appreciation for it. And consequently, you get conflicts and then you get resentment and you get bottlenecks and all of these negative vibes just come creeping up. Over the years, the SMMA has done extremely well. The SMMA was a model for the other regions. The documentaries on the SMMA or the marine protected areas were emulating the SMMA. But over the years, its prominence kind of declined and COVID gave it a serious, serious blow to the point of almost closing shop because the SMMA depends on tourism mainly for its survival. We do not get a subvention from the government. So it's our revenue generation to sustain the operations will come from tourism. And since tourism was almost gone during COVID, there was a very serious blow. Since then, we are trying to resuscitate the organization and doing a number of initiatives. And what I am doing right now is part of an initiative to communicate to the world, to solutions, to people in Souffre, what the SMMA is all about. Because people, they've heard of the SMMA, but they do not know what it is, what it does, its significance. And so I felt that it is important to bring out that message. So through GIZ, this is a German agency, we got a grant financing and they put together a consultant for us to do promotions and marketing of the SMMA. And that is why I am here today. We have had several other activities. We've gone to the schools to tell the school children about it. We have been on TV. We were on NBC not too long ago telling people about it. And today I am with GIZ doing the very same thing. We are going to have stakeholders. We are going to be meeting all of the users of the marine space. The boat drivers, the boat charters, the catamaran and the snorkelers, the hotels. We are going to have one huge meeting to do the very same thing with them. Because we believe by communicating with people, they better appreciate what you are doing. Okay, so to the ordinary man in Souffre, to the ordinary man in St. Lucia, how would you explain that the activities of the SMMA can benefit them? How does it translate to their benefit? What would you tell them that the SMMA is, how is it significant or important to their well-being? Okay, let us take it by sector. Let us take the tourism sector. Let us take the hotels. And lastly, Sugar Beach. They have a very diversified product. They attract as many persons as possible, visitors. And the niche market focuses on the marine aspect of St. Lucia. So, you have Anchor Steve, for all year round they would have visitors coming, but they were coming specifically to do activities underwater, water-related activities. And as I said, they were going to be snorkeling, they were going to be diving. There were lots of beautiful sites in the area and nice coral, so they would come and they would see that. So the hotel then is sustained, and because the hotel is sustained, because it has this attraction, then people remain in employment. Jobs are created at the hotels. All of the hotels are on Souffre, who have this water support activity based on our marine resource. For the fishermen, they do benefit. Some fishermen believe that we are pushing them out, but it is not that. It is a reverse. Because there is what you call the depletion of the fish stock. If you extract from a resource constantly and you don't replenish, it will disappear. Now, we know internationally the rate at which fishing is done, massive catches, huge or modern equipment, and at the same time, how do we replenish that? And so, based on the marine reserve, we have marine protected areas primarily for conservation. We assist in planting coral, growing coral, creating nurseries, putting fish devices to allow young juvenile fish to spawn and to grow, and so with the hope that when they reach a certain size, then they will just move away and then the fishermen will be able to go. So we are actually trying to restock by putting the coral back in the water, because the coral is the nursery that is where they spawn. And so, if we create that environment for them, and we have pictures of the effectiveness of what we are doing within the SMMA. If you go to Instagram, SMMA, Instagram, you will see a device. That one is in the library, but we have a few in Sufra, and you will see young juvenile lobsters in the device that we built. A very simple device. You take PVC pipe, you buy conch shell in the library, put a few blocks on it, and a layer of conch shell, and we drop it at the bottom of the sea bed. And then it begins to flourish, and then the fish begin to spawn in it, and you get quite hundreds of them, as you can see on the, if you want to go to Instagram. I understand that recently you all have been faced with a, I don't know if you could call it a new situation, but a challenge of spearfishing. Would you like to speak to that? Yes, this is getting serious, and I want to make a special appeal to the Divers Association, ABAGLO and its members and all of the other people. It is illegal in this country to do spearfishing if you do not have a license. If you want to do spearfishing, you need to get some authorization from the Chief Fisheries Officer. What we are experiencing is that a lot of young guys in Sufra, they are top operators who are marketing a package, a top package, which includes diving. Now the visitors who are going to be using the spearguns do not have a license, and so they are operating illegally. You don't want people to do spearfishing for several reasons. Number one, it's risky. The area where you're going to spearfish, you may have people snorkeling, and you may miss and accidentally hit somebody with your spear. The other reason, the coral is so sensitive. If you go in the industry and that's where you're going to get quite a bit of fish, and then you begin to shoot and you miss, and every time you shoot, you break a branch of the coral. You are on doing all of the efforts that we are putting into creating an ecosystem that will help fish to spawn. It's very, very, very, very dangerous. And that is why when you apply for the license, they will tell you where you can go, where it is safe, what kind of spear you can use, and everything like that. But some operators are selling the tool, and they have spearfishing as part, as a component of the package that they are promoting, without necessarily understanding. The law is very clear. The Fisheries Act makes it abundantly clear that you are not to do spearfishing in this country if you do not have a license. So the appeal is to those persons who will do it, to do it properly, go to the Department of Fisheries, get your license, if you want to do it, they will advise you where you can. We have a wreck somewhere by Ascochon, a sound conchip, and that is an attraction for visitors. They dive, they snorkel, and this is the very simplest that the spearfishers want to go to consider conflict and the potential hazard that it is creating. So you are saying that those people who are interested in spearfishing should first apply for a license as mandated by the law? By the law, yes. We are not saying that you are going to do spearfishing. All we are saying is that get the license, because once you get the license, you will be restricted where you cannot. Thank you for that answer. And we do for a break, but when we return, we will be discussing some of the areas of conflict which the SMMA has had a serious hand in resolving back in a moment. We consume and we don't spare a thought for the damage that they'll do. The damage that they do. No, children. Think about the children. Culls and GMOs are not the solution. Use organic and join. Excessive agrochemical use, additives and genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment. Join the Good Food Revolution. Grow, buy and consume organic. A message from Rye St. Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development with funding from the GEF Small Grants Program, UNDP. Welcome back. We are speaking with Mr. Harold Dalson, the president-chairman of the Souffre Marine Management Association on the activities of the association. Just before we went to break Mr. Dalson, you were speaking about some of the challenges relating to fishers who do the spare fish. I note here that one of the missions of the SMMA is to resolve conflicts. Conflicts within yachts and fishers. Conflicts within commercial dive operators and fishers. So your association principally has to deal with a lot of management of those resources. Now, I know of late or recently there have been conflicts, if you will, between the local community and perhaps hoteliers. Could you speak to that in terms of building sites that are perhaps prohibited in terms of land sale and does your association have any oversight or any influence in those kinds of conflicts? Yes. The mission of the SMMA primarily is to provide oversight in terms of what goes on and what does not go on within the protected area. The protected area is about... For people, some of us may not know. We have the SMMA which starts from Pointe Blanche. That's close to Ascochon and it extends all the way to Asiba. That's about 11 kilometers. There's also Kama, which is the cannery's ancillary management authority which starts from Ascochon going all the way up to Ruzu. Kama, to a certain extent, does not get the kind of oversight that it really deserves because of the absence of adequate resources to extend ourselves that far. So right now we are showing a presence there, but it is just a presence. We are more integral in the SMMA management authority. When the SMMA was conceived, there were lots of conflicts. Conflict between hotels, fishermen and guests, yachters and boat boys, a lot of conflict. And this conflict still persists. What we do from time to time is to intervene. For example, there is a serious conflict at Tikai and Anshasne and Sugar Beach because these places are inundated. They overpopulate this place during the peak of the cruise ship season and at peak time during the day. So you have your good boys, you have water taxi, you have the water catamaran, you have snorkelers, you have divers, all of them congested in one area. And then what happens? A guy is diving, a fellow comes at full blast with a speedboat. The potential for a disaster is right there. So what we are doing right now, we are embarked on an initiative to try to regulate that, to put in more surveillance, more management control. And now we are focusing on the Anshasne Beach. So we are hoping by the end of the year there will be some measure of control. And if it is successful, then we use that as a blueprint to operate or to control what's happening at Tikai. Tikai is going through a lot. Tikai is a beautiful place, but the volume of people in the water are doing water-related activities is just too much. And the problem these hotels are experiencing is that the visitors who come, they use their washroom, they use their facilities and they didn't cater for so many of them. And then they have their own guests who are totally dislocated. So that creates some kind of a conflict. You need to have somebody to provide some oversight and to regulate and to ensure that things are done properly. We do not want to deny people access to say the beaches because every beach in St. Lucia is actually accessible to everybody. But when it becomes overcrowded, congested, you need to put some measures in place. Anshasne, we are looking at the possibility of... What are some of those measures that you are putting in this? Could you elaborate on that? Right now, we are just working on, we are just trying to source they call it a bathing, a swim area. So we need to get a swim line about 40-50 feet from the shore. And then once you install the swim line, then the boats cannot go in there. The snorkelers cannot go in there, it's just for you to swim. So you minimize the conflict, you minimize, so everybody is in just one area. Sugar Beach has one, it's working perfectly all right. But at the same time, Anshasne is a fishing priority area. So you see the conflict. So the fishermen must have undisturbed access to that area so that if there is a catch and they see the catch, automatically they have the right to go and open up their eclipse, to open up the fish line and take the catch. And that must be understood because it's a fishing priority area, it's for them. And also we use it for recreation and so on. But the fishermen must get priority in those areas, not only that. Not only that, Sugar Beach also. And it works well. It can work well with understanding, with proper understanding and proper mechanisms in place, it can work well. So that's one of the things that we are doing is what I'm doing right now. Communicating, appealing to people. Those of you who have the vessels, please be more considerate. Stop playing the loud music when you go into the beach because they are guests at the hotels. We are appealing to the users of the facility. If we say it's a fishing priority area, consider it as a fishing priority area. If it is a marine reserve, you cannot go inside and do anything. You cannot go down snorkel, you cannot go and dive, you cannot go and fish. So we are providing surveillance underwater. We need more, we need the help, we need assistance. We do not get a subvention from government. It's the legal that we collect. And I hope you'll give me a chance to explain how we generate our revenue. You could go right ahead and tell us how we generate your revenue. So the legal that we have, we are trying our best to manage the designated area to prevent all of this, but you have to bury first. Because we are not there to push anybody out of the industry or to deny somebody an opportunity to make a dollar. We are here to manage a natural resource, manage an ecosystem, manage what is, this is so critical for our country. And it's not only St. Lucia. You go to Honduras, they have Rua Tan, manage Dominica, has the Dominican management, marine management, Caymans, the Trinidad and Tobago, the Tobago Keys, St. Vincent, everywhere there is a marine protected area. And they all manage on the same principle. In fact, there is a regional, I would say almost international organization of all marine protected parks. We call it MPA Connect. And St. Lucia is part of it. SMMA has a very prominent status within that organization. And most of the other people are looking upon us, asking us for advice, because we are long. Some of these organizations are just starting, but we have been there long. And they want to emulate some of the things that we are doing. So we are pleading to the users to cooperate. Do not move your vessel with all of that speed when you don't have to. If you are going into a beach area, bathing, be more considerate. If we say this is no diving in that area, do not go and dive in that area. If you are a visitor, do not go and interfere with the fisherman's net or ports, because we have reported incidents where visitors, they go and dive and they see a fishing port in the fishing priority area. And they go and interfere with the ports. They open it up and release the fish. So all of these are conflicts that we have to manage. And people must be aware of the sensitivity of all of these issues, all cropping up within a small area. And that's why the SNM is so important. Our revenue is limited, because all we are asking from the operators, the debut operators, the debut charters, the water taxis, anybody who travels the protected area, from Marigold to Asiwon, just for every guest you have on the boat to make a contribution of one US dollar. One US dollar. That's for the boat operators. Every boat operator should do a head count and make a contribution of one US dollar for now. And from 2014, it has been one US dollar. And then we are trying to increase it and we are getting a lot of resistance. And one of the reasons that they advance is the fact that what are we doing with it? Now I have explained all of the things that we are doing. We have two vessels. Just to go and do oversight on surveillance, $300 in petrol. Two of them. So how do we sustain? We have nine staff members. How do we pay them? We need to put marines. Very expensive. We have rangers. Our rangers, they go and maintain the marines, change the route. We have to build the blocks to keep the marines on the ground. A batch is going to charge $15,000 to $20,000 to go and install the marines. How do we raise it? So the appeal is if you are using the marine area, if you are coming to Souffre, apart from paying the jetty toll, because we have nothing to do with the jetty, but for traversing the marine park, it is called a user fee or an entrance fee. Everywhere you go in the world, you pay that in the marine protected area. St. Lucia is the cheapest in the world. A friend of mine came from Tobago, and he told me he had to pay $10 per person. And here we are asking for one US. And we are getting resistance. We are getting people who don't want to pay. What are we doing? How can we do if we don't have revenue? As we're winding down in your same appeal, perhaps you could explain to people how all of your protection, all of your conservation, all of your management of the marine unit redounds to the socio and economic benefits of the community in particular and the nation at large. Could you give them an understanding of how it actually benefits them, what the SMAE is trying to put in place? It's a life, a general principle in life. Whether it's be a home in the office on the street, if you do not have regulations, if you don't have oversight, if you don't have management, there is going to be chaos. And you just have to see the SMAE in that respect, that we are managing the resource with the hope that it is going to be attractive and entice more visitors to come, create more water sports activities, more marine related activities, like a day charter, like a cruise, a sunset cruise, it is going to do that. And by so doing, we're bringing more visitors, more visitors with departure tax, they rent a taxi, they go to the hotel, they do all kinds of things. So by managing it, we are supporting livelihoods of the community. Just imagine the area I mentioned is just loose. Anybody can come and do anything at any time. Can you imagine what would be there? Chaos. And so to get it done, we need to have a base and office. We need to pay rent, utilities, we need to pay staff, we need to buy moorings, we need to maintain our boat. And that is why I'm making the appeal. And those entrepreneurs are saying, what are you all doing? We're not saying you're doing anything. We are doing. It is just that we are limited. And we are asking you, in fact, I'm taking this opportunity to announce that there is, there was an amendment to the Fisheries Act, which allows us to regulate the collection of fees and to do other things. Now the document is in draft. Once it is in the, once the drafters have reviewed it, I want to invite all of the stakeholders, divers, knocklers, both to our meeting so that we can discuss it thoroughly. Thank you so much, Mr. Harold Also, President and Chairman of the Suffer Marine Management Authority, speaking to us there on some of the activities of the association. And we know with the cruise season about to take off here in October, we'll be hearing more from the SMAE. Once again, thank you.