Motives for Poaching in Marine Protected Areas in the Seychelles

Abstract

Motives for non-compliance with no-take regulations in the eight marine protected areas (MPAs) of the Inner Islands of the Republic of Seychelles were investigated using semistructured interviews with fishers. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) of responses to questions was used to classify known poachers and non-poachers to an accuracy of 94%. This classification procedure can be used to predict the poaching status of fishers of unknown poaching status, based on their responses to a standard set of questions. Although these results are preliminary, they suggest that DFA represents a powerful tool in the investigation of sensitive issues such as illegal fishing, as its use of responses to a combination of relatively innocuous questions allows the prediction of poaching activity to a high level of accuracy without requiring a direct admission to poaching. Qualitative data also presented here support these results and offer further insights into the biological, economic and socio-political motives for poaching. Keywords : marine protected areas, MPA, poaching, fisheries, Seychelles West Indian Ocean Journal of Marine Science Vol. 3 (2) 2004: pp. 199-208