Monnereau, I.

Aquatic Commons

Social Impact On Human-Well-Being of Different Governance Arrangements  
of Lobster Fisheries in the Caribbean 
 
IRIS MONNEREAU 
MARE (Centre for Maritime Research) University of Amsterdam Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130 Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130 
Amsterdam, 1018 VZ The Netherlands  
 
ABSTRACT 
Lobster fishing (Panulirus argus) is an important economic activity throughout the Caribbean, both as a source of income and 
employment for the local population as well as foreign exchange for national governments. Sustainable management of lobster fish-
eries in the Caribbean region is therefore very important for the attainment of national economic and social development goals, as 
well as for the human well being and livelihoods of individuals and families dependent on these fisheries. The governance arrange-
ments associated with the Caribbean lobster fisheries are found with a varying degree of success; from highly successful in one 
country to a high degree of overexploitation and near collapse of the fishery in another. Although the economic 
drivers for overexploitation – notably the high value of lobster on the international market – are identical, not all lobster fisher-
ies appear to be equally affected. This PhD research investigates the differences and similarities in governance arrangements of the 
lobster fisheries in Belize, Cuba, Nicaragua and Jamaica and the impact thereof on the human well-being of the lobster fishers. 
 
KEY WORDS:  Lobster fisheries, governance, human-well being,  
 
Los Impactos Sociales de los Diferentes Tipos de Arreglos de  
Gobernancia de la Pesca de la Langosta en el Caribe 
 
La pesca de langosta (Panulirus argus) es una actividad económica muy importante que se desempeña por todo el Caribe. Es 
una fuente de ingresos y empleo para la población local y una fuente de comercio para los gobiernos nacionales. La administración 
sostenible de la industria de la pesca de langostas en la región del caribe es, por eso, muy importante para el mejoramiento de la 
economía nacional y su desarrollo, como  también para el bienestar social y los modos de vida de individuos y familias que depen-
den de esta industria. Los arreglos de gobernancia de la pesca de la langosta en el Caribe están encontrados con diferentes niveles de 
éxito; altamente exitoso en un país hasta grandemente sobreexplotado y cercano a un colapso en 
otro. Aunque los factores económicos para la sobreexplotación—notablemente el aumento del valor de la langosta en el merca-
do internacional—son los mismos, no todas las pesqueras parecen ser afectadas igualmente. Esta investigación estudia las diferen-
cias y similitudes en el ordenamiento de gobernabilidad en las pesqueras de langosta en Belice, Cuba, Nicaragua y Jamaica, y el 
impacto de ellos sobre el bienestar de los pescadores de langosta. 
 
PALABRAS CLAVES:  Pesca de langosta, governancia, human-well-being,  
Proceedings of the 60th Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute     November 5 - 9, 2007   Punta Cana, Dominican Republic 
INTRODUCTION 
When one thinks of lobster ,it is probably in a 
romantic setting with an exquisite, candlelit dinner. Or 
maybe some will associate lobster rather with their fear in 
facing the practical problems that arise when trying to eat 
this basically giant sea insect that dates from the Jurassic 
period (Wallace 2005).  While for others it’s the image of 
live lobster frantically trying to cling to the pot’s sides 
when being boiled alive and the questioned morality of 
inflicting pain upon another creature. 
Nevertheless, the image of the lobster in Europe and 
North America nowadays is that of a superb, mouth-
watering delicacy.  It has a rich history of use and is still 
considered to be an aphrodisiac.  In Europe, lobster has 
been a cherished food among the nobility for centuries, 
even though it was too expensive for most common men to 
eat.  In North America, however, it wasn’t until the 19th 
century that lobster gained their status as a sought after, 
high priced delicacy.  In the 17th and 18th centuries, the 
lobster was so common it was considered ‘junk’ food and 
so abundant that they were used as hooked bait or fertilizer 
for farmers' fields (The Economist 2005).  Here, the lobster 
was not considered to be a dish fit for the rich but consid-
ered food for the poor.  It was so commonly used as food 
for servants and prisoners that Massachusetts passed a law 
forbidding its use more than twice a per week lobster 
dinner was considered cruel and unusual punishment. 
This image changed in the 19th century and combined 
with better infrastructure allowing for the shipping of live 
lobster from small coast settlements to the mayor cities 
trade increased.  The increased demand for lobsters also 
stimulated a spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) industry in the 
Caribbean region since the 1960s and 1970s.  Local 
consumption of lobster in the Caribbean had never been 
high, but now international market demand caused fishers 
to specifically target lobster.  They employed a variety of 
gears, and processing plants were established in order to 
process and distribute the lobster to the international 
market.  
In the last decades increased global demand and a 
large local tourist industry has stimulated the lobster 
industry even further and nowadays around 50,000 lobster 
Page 231  60th Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute  
 
fishers active in the region, with an additional 200,000 
people working in positions related to the lobster fishery 
(FAO 2003).  Considering that for every fisher and fish 
worker there are a number of dependents the importance of 
the fishery is even greater.  Between 1992 and 2001, 
average annual lobster landings in the Caribbean region 
were reported to be 36,827 tonnes, with an estimated value 
of US$500 million.  It is the single species most important 
fishery in the Caribbean, and as a result, the fishery 
represents both as a source of income and employment for 
the local population as well as foreign exchange for 
national governments.  However, the high global demand 
and consequent high unit prices have resulted in ever 
increased fishing effort and consequent increasing scarcity 
of the spiny lobster in the major part of the Caribbean.  The 
spiny lobster is now considered to be either fully exploited-
to-overexploited in the majority of the Caribbean countries 
(FAO In preparation). 
The same spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) is caught all 
over the Caribbean and exported to the USA, Canada, and 
the European Union.  However, whereas the exterior of the 
lobster and price of the lobster on the market ends up being 
identical the lobster chain from harvest to distribution is 
wide-ranging throughout the Caribbean.  The image of the 
lobster as a posh mouth-watering delicacy, just a step or 
two down from caviar, is deficient in showing the level of 
increasing scarcity of the resource, difference in govern-
ance arrangements under which it has been fished or daily 
life conditions of lobster fishers in the Caribbean.  The 50 
US$ dollar ‘grilled in garlic-and-butter sauce’ lobster tail 
on your plate does not reveal whether it has been caught by 
a Nicaraguan lobster diver who uses 14 SCUBA tanks a 
day working eight hours, six days a week, searching the sea 
floor for these creatures.  He carries out his work only 
wearing a piece of swim-underwear, weight belt, mask, and 
tank.   Due to lack of proper training and equipment such 
as depth meter, buoyancy vest, dive watch etc., he faces a 
near 100% chance of suffering from the bends in three 
years, causing paralysis and frequently death as well 
(Ehrardt 2006).  Or it might have been caught by a 
Nicaraguan lobster trapper on an industrial boat working at 
sea in shifts of 45 days with only three days on land before 
returning back to sea.  Here, the fisher works in an 
environment that closely resembles an assembly line with 
the difference that it is located 80 miles out of the coast 
with a rolling floor, often accompanied by harsh weather 
conditions and working days of 16 hours with few breaks 
in between for around $0.40 per hour.  During the large 
absence away from home, working alongside 11 crewmem-
bers and the captain and sharing sleeping and eating 
quarters, the crew becomes the substitute for lack of family 
and friends.   
On the other hand, it might have been caught by a 
small-scale trapper in Belize who participates in other 
economic activities as well, such as tourism, and only 
checks his traps every three days during a day trip.  Or 
maybe it has been caught by a Jamaican fisher, who spends 
years of his life on a very small atoll located nearly 100 km 
out of mainland catching lobster, conch, and finfish.  This 
small atoll in the middle of nowhere is shared with 400 
other fishers, eight coast guard personnel and 25 prosti-
tutes, without electricity, running water or toilets.  Every 
night, if the weather permits, he goes out to scavenge the 
sea for lobster and other marine life using a flashlight.  He 
has overcome his fear of sharks, barracudas, and other 
large predator fish, which he frequently encounters as they 
hunt for the same product during the first years of his 
fishing career.  He is connected to an air compressor on 
board the small-scale boat on the surface by a 50 meter 
tube permitting him to work all night.  His income enables 
him to buy a modest house on the mainland, where he 
might only spend five weeks a year with wife and children.  
It is exactly these gaps of information the author 
wishes to address. The central research question is: ‘What 
is the impact of different governance arrangements of 
lobster fisheries in the Caribbean region for the well-being 
of lobster fishers?’ In lobster fisheries research the main 
focus has traditionally been on natural science data 
gathering while the social-economic data gathering has 
lacked behind, a fact recognized by FAO/WECAFC at its 
most recent Spiny Lobster management meeting in Merida, 
Mexico in 2006 (FAO In peparation).  There is only 
limited local socio-economic data available and more 
social research needs to be undertaken to fill in the 
knowledge gaps that are critical for designing effective 
management responses. 
This research aims to provide information that will 
address the effects of governance on human well being of 
fishers at a wider scope. This research will provide 
information by concentrating on the effects of different 
governance arrangements at the local level across a variety 
of nations. Even though governance has been the centre of 
debate in academia for the past decades there is no 
consensus on the definition of governance. It is used in a 
variety of ways in a variety of settings and there is no 
consensus on methods and techniques of data-gathering. 
In this research the interactive governance approach as 
developed by Kooiman et al. (2005) will be used as a point 
of reference.  The interactive governance approach relates 
to the whole of public as well as private interactions that 
are initiated to solve societal problems and create societal 
solutions, and therefore includes public as well as private 
actors.  Interaction by academics, policymakers, and users 
is a necessary condition (Kooiman et al. 2005).  The focus 
of governance is not only multi-actor (from public to semi-
private to private) but also multi-scale ranging from the 
The name “lobster” stems from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a shady form of the Latin word for locust 
combined with the old English loppe, which meant spider (Wallace, 2005).  
   Monnereau, I.   GCFI:60   (2008) Page 232 
 
international, national to the local level. Within this multi-
scale analysis there are three foci of attention;  
i) The ‘fish chain’ (the lobster chain from ecosystem to 
capture to international market), 
ii) The institutional system, focusing on how the fishery 
is governed, and  
iii) The principles that guide the behavior of the actors 
involved.  
 
The interactive governance approach is a new 
approach in fisheries governance that has been developed 
over the last years.  Even though this approach has been 
gaining widespread attention, few practical studies have 
been carried out and many methodological questions still 
remain.  This research will help fill in some of these gaps. 
Human well-being has been extensively studied for 
decades, attracting numerous academic disciplines within 
the social sciences (McGillivray 2006).  The concept of 
well-being proposes to link analysis of both macro and 
micro level (Gough et al. 2007).  According to these 
authors, well-being is constituted of 1) human needs 
(income, education, food security, alternative livelihoods 
etc.); 2) some sense of autonomy regarding the decision 
you make in your life; 3) satisfaction quality; how satisfied 
you are in the level of achievement of your goals/ideas/
wishes etc.  Well-being provides a way to understand a 
person’s life from a more holistic perspective than is 
commonly adapted in development thinking.  Positive 
outcomes of human well-being measurement between 
countries are often attributed to specific policy interven-
tions while poor outcomes are often linked with either 
absence of appropriate policies, or the presence of inappro-
priate ones – or both (McGillivray 2006).   Achieved well-
being measures are therefore seen as important tools, used 
in design and evaluation of policies, both national and 
international (McGillivray 2006).   
This study attempts to bridge a gap by focussing on 
the effects of different governance arrangements present in 
the lobster fisheries on human well-being of fishers. The 
research project runs from July 2006 - April 2011. 
Fieldwork is carried out in the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, 
Jamaica, and Nicaragua. They represent a variety of 
different governance arrangements. While limited in 
geographical scope, as the study investigates four countries 
in the Wider Caribbean region, replication of the research 
in other areas within the Wider Caribbean where the 
lobster fishery is of significant importance is anticipated. 
The information acquired will hopefully provide the 
necessary information needed in order to improve the well-
being for those who need it most. 
 
 
LITERATURE CITED 
Jones, G. 2005. When lobster was fertilizer. The Economist, October. 
Ehrardt, N. 2006. Estudio Integral sobre la Pesquería Langosta del Mar 
Caribe realizada mediante las tecnicas de captura de nasas y buceo. 
MIFIC/AdPESCA, Managua. Nicaragua. 
FAO. 2003.  Fisheries Report No. 715: Report of the second Workshop on 
the Management of the Caribbean Lobster Fisheries in the 
WECAFC Area in Cuba 30th Sept- 4th October 2002.FAO, Rome, 
Italy.  
FAO. [In press].  Report on the fifth Workshop on Management of the 
Caribbean Lobster Fisheries in the WECAFC Area in Merida, 
Mexico September 18-29th 2006.  
Gough, I., J. McGregor, and l. Camfield. 2006.  Well-being in developing 
countries: conceptual foundations of the WeD programme. WeD 
Working Paper 19.  
http://www.bath.ac.uk/econ-dev/wellbeing/research/workingpaperpdf/
wed19.pdf 
Kooiman, J., M. Bavinck, S. Jentoft, and R. Pullin (eds.). 2005. Fish For 
Life: Interactive Governance for Fisheries. Amsterdam, The 
Netherlands. 
McGillivray, M. 2006.  Human well-being: issues, concepts and 
measures. In: M. McGilliyray (ed.)Human Well-Being: Concept and 
Measurement.  Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, United Kingdom. 
Wallace, D. 2005.  Consider the lobster. Abacus, London. Great-Britain.  
 
2http://www.lobsters.org/tlcbio/biology.html 
 


Social impact on human-well-being of different governance arrangements of lobster fisheries in the Caribbean

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Social impact on human-well-being of different governance arrangements of lobster fisheries in the Caribbean

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