BV held a workshop over the weekend with the aim of presenting results from our on-going research and to introduce our new Socioeconomic Monitoring Project, which is part of the SocMon Western Indian Ocean (WIO) initiative aiming to expand socio-economic monitoring throughout the WIO, and establish a regional network.
The aim of the workshop was update the villagers about why we are doing the research we are. It also gave Bic, our effervescent Malagasy scientist, his first chance to give a presentation to the village, and we have it on good authority that he was great and kept the audiences’ attention throughout. We would also like to say a big thank you and well done to Patricia (our new Malagasy social scientist) for all her help in preparing the workshop – it was a great team effort!
Presentations included results of recent octopus closures, reef monitoring projects, and census data; future research plans were also outlined.
This workshop was also used to gauge the perception of the villagers to the national closures and local No Take Zones, and receive feedback on their opinion of BV and the work we do, both with the local environment, and the local community.
Here is a sneak preview of the results when we asked the 79 people (37 women, 42 men) about their perceptions of BV and our work:
• Understanding of our work/activities: None 18%, little 28%, medium 14%, high 31% and no answer 9%.
• The impact of BV: No positive impact – 3%, little 20%, medium 14%, a lot
of positive impact 63% (including 76% of the octopus fishers).
