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By interviewing Bahamian elders who were Professional Bonefish Angling Guides, a host of new scientifically important knowledge will develop which will complement current understandings, and add new knowledge.

 

Early Bahamian Angling Guides worked tirelessly to establish a world-class tourism business that generates upwards of $141 million annually. (Fedler 2010)

 

Their contributions to the Bahamas Tourism industry, the global shallow-water angling industry, and the history and evolution of saltwater flyfishing, need to be recognized.

 

This Bahamas Bonefish Research initiative will document the lives of pioneering guides across the Bahamas. It will generate important historical information for the country, and associated businesses. It will document environmental data previously unobtainable and it will provide fascinating stories and accounts of times gone by.

Tom Karrow, Bahamas Research, TEK, Traditional Ecological Knowledge

“It makes good sense to involve people who spend a lot of time on the land in environmental assessment and management, for the obvious reason that they get to see things more often, for longer, and at more different times and places that is normally the case for scientists. These observations, and the resulting hypotheses, can complement observations that contemporary scientists are in a position to make through such techniques as magnification, remote sensing, or chemical or genetic analysis.” (Usher, 2000)

“Ideologies of sustainability evolving in modern industrial cultures are convergent with stewardship principles long practiced by indigenous and local peoples.” (Lertzman, 2010)

Local communities or indigenous people already have “ready to use” systems for resource management, developed over centuries of resource monitoring and adaptation. This is a “body of knowledge based on the intimate relationship between people and nature which results in local wisdom to keep living in balance and harmony.” (Budi Utomo, 2010)

“TK enhances resilience of social-ecological systems because this knowledge, accumulated through experience, learning, and intergenerational transmission, has demonstrated the ability to deal with complexity and uncertainty.(Berkes, 2012) Incorporating this knowledge-base into SRM increases flexibility within systems, and provides effective time-tested strategies in the face of inevitable change resulting from anthropomorphic variables like mass tourism or climate change.

TK is recognized to, contribute invaluable information for science and natural resource management, often filling gaps in understanding, which science is unable to. (Bohensky & Maru, 2011)

 

Knowledge being accessed through this research initiative is not by definition "traditional", a term applied to knowledge associated with aboriginal populations inhabiting regions for centuries.  Ideology behind application of guide knowledge, or experiential knowledge, accuired over countless hours, days, months and years on the flats is similar, hence the references to TK.  Through Bonefish "guiding" and observation of natural processes, guides have acquired importnant ecological knowledge that can add to resource understanding and management. Moreover, through inclusion of guides as stakeholders in resource management, long term sustainability is more likley to ensue.

 

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