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GOOD PRACTICE

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Eradicating blast fishing in Montenegro through consistent boat patrols and a reporting web app

Montenegro

Eradicating blast fishing in Montenegro through consistent boat patrols and a reporting web app
Period
2015 - 2017

A team of young local enthusiasts, employed by Ulcinj Municipality, leads an ambitious project to eradicate blast fishing, a deeply rooted and dangerous tradition in Montenegro. With the support of the local government, NGOs, and Norwegian funding, they implement a comprehensive approach using boat patrols and a web app for transparent fishing reporting, resulting in a successful safeguard of the marine ecosystem and respectful fishery’s practices.

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Identification needs
The project was writen with the main purpose of eliminating the damaging habits of blast fishing (fishing through use of explosive devices) which were very deeply rooted within the Montenegrin society as a common habit, since use of explosive for fishing was so widely spread through society that it was truly becoming a serious danger for the whole marine ecosystem, thus affecting the fisheries but also damaging the whole undersea fauna.
Stakeholder change

All of the stakeholders and main resposnible institutions were activated at persuing and stopping this ugly phenomenon, starting from the good will of Government, the Ministry of internal affairs, Ministry of Agriculture down to the local level - e.g. Minicipalities and NGO'' s.

Change triggered
A phenomenon that was truly common among all of Montenegro, has become truly rare, the change that is generated nowadays is that the blast fishing phenomenon was reduced to a minimum and is being totally erradicated.
Short description
What is truly exceptional is that the project was completely written by the team of young local enthusiasts that the Ulcinj Municipality has gathered and employed, which as a consequence produced a very intuitive project focusing on local needs and localy based ways of tackling this very ugly phenomenon. The project proposal was very much appreciated and then funded by the Norwegian Government, opening a path to a successfull implementation of the project itself. Among all other activities, one of the main tools put in place which affected the success of this project was that a Patrol officer was employed by the Municipality and was boat patroling the coastal area of Ulcinj, which was entitled to report on all of the illegal activities or suspicious events that were noticed at sea. The other important tool was the web ap that was originally developed by the project team, wheras all the noticed activities where uploaded within web platform, with photos, narative reports were shared for all the important institutions for accessing and viewing. For all these events that were noticed a there was a periodic report sent to the Police department, so everything was transparent and available for every stakeholders and authorised institution to view, raising questions of responsibility.

Life Below Water