 St. Lucia's national policy for fisheries has been revised to maximise implementation of its nine priority areas by engaging more stakeholders to the sector. Chief Fisheries Officer Sarita Williams-Peter says the revised document expands beyond the ecosystem focus to other elements of the sector, including post-harvest matters in fisheries and agriculture, CMOS production logistics and a wider scope on the climate change response. This, she says, will address the sector's issues more comprehensively as opposed to the previous limited policy. It did not take into account sort of the triple bottom line of sustainable development, which includes the ecological, the social and the economic considerations in any sector. And so we've tried to move away from only focusing on the resource and the ecosystem, but recognising that the fisheries sector is an entire value chain, and we need to consider everyone in the value chain, not only fishers. So I'm hoping that not only fishers are glued here today, but processors, all individuals who have a stake or have an interest in the fisheries sector or depend on fish as a livelihood would be geared up and listening to about the policy and know how to move forward. The revised policy will foster a more collaborative approach among stakeholders to improve the welfare of all parties in the fisheries value chain. In 2018, when we began the consultation process for this new policy, we tried to broaden our scope of stakeholders involved. The previous one, we focus more on the fisher folk, the fishers, those who go out to see, the boat owners, crew, et cetera, cooperative members, et cetera. But then we realise that, hey, if we want a sector to develop the full value chain and to bring in the social and economic considerations, we needed to bring in more sector players. We needed to recognise that we had to bring in gender. We brought the gender people, we brought in social transformation, we brought in export St Lucia, all those major players, commerce, all of those industry stakeholders to come in and really understand what the fisheries sector needed and to help integrate that into their portfolios as well. William Speter explained that the direction of the policy may not have immediate payoffs for parties in the fisheries chain, but will over time improve efficiency in the industry. The average fisher would say, where's the money in my pocket? Right. That's just going to be the bottom line. The reality is that the work that we do, it takes time. Change, paradigm shifts take time to realise improvements. So for example, when the Department of Fisheries introduced the first fad in St Lucia, fishers went out, grabbed it and brought it right back to shore. They didn't understand what it was. They didn't understand the benefit. They thought, well, what is this thing in the water? Now you have fishers, but we need fads. Fishers are building their own fads. People are advocating for fads because they see the importance. The bottom line is that we're trying to create an environment where fishers can eventually benefit from. So you may not see a direct benefitting moment in your pocket tomorrow, but it is creating an environment where you can now thrive better. You can see other opportunities. You can move. The revised national policy for the fisheries sector takes effect for the period 2020 to 2030.