Using stakeholder's perspectives of 'Managed Access' to guide management efforts in small-scale fisheries

Controlling and monitoring fishing effort and understanding human perspectives on fisheries management strategies are paramount to the successful management and sustainability of fisheries. Open-access fishing, which is commonplace in the small-scale fisheries (SSFs) of developing countries, poses severe challenges to management, and to address many of these challenges, Belize implemented a country-wide rights-based fishery (RBF) management strategy known as Managed Access (MA). This study uses Q methodology to explore the perspectives of four key stakeholder groups on the early impacts of the strategy, revealing five distinct perspectives. Perspective 1 supported MA but believed some components needed revision. Perspective 2 had high confidence in MA and expected improvements with financial investments. Perspective 3 did not believe in the strategy and expressed frustration with it not protecting fishers' rights. Perspective 4 captured the biological concerns not addressed by the strategy, while Perspective 5 focused on the strategy's inability to make the fisheries more profitable thus far. The different perspectives indicate that MA will be unlikely to meet its objectives without more financial investment in enforcement and stakeholder engagement, research and the strengthening of institutional capacity. This study contributes to the scarce scientific information on the early stages of RBF systems implementation in SSFs.