Bio-diversity

This project seeks support to conduct a feasibility study on providing live bait to fishers on the North and East coasts of Trinidad, so that fishers will reduce their use of gillnet fishing gear which is incredibly destructive to endangered leatherback sea turtles. Each year more than 1,000 leatherback sea turtles drown in the coastal gillnets of Trinidad. This accidental mortality jeopardizes leatherback populations, and thereby a primary economic driver to the NE Trinidad ecotourism industry. It also jeopardizes fisher income as the damage caused to the nets by the turtle entanglement is highly detrimental to fisher livelihoods. Fishers working on the north and east coasts prefer to fish with live bait using turtle safe hook-and-line fishing methods, but lack of a steady bait supply has led them to use non-selective and environmentally destructive gillnet methods. We believe that bait can be sourced in Trinidad and provided to east coast fishers as we know that live bait is commonly available in NW Trinidad during the summer months. Our project seeks to 1) determine if bait can be caught on the east coast during the summer turtle nesting season 2) if it can be transported from NW Trinidad and held on the east coast to supply fishers.

Trinidad and tobago