The Main Marine Species of Haiti: Their Main Ecological and Biological Traits and Their Value for Artisanal Fisheries

The study was written by Philippe Vendeville (IRD), Wilson Celestin (Université d'État d'Haïti), Henri Vallès (University of the West Indies) and Samson Jean Marie (Université de Bretagne Occidentale) as part of the IRD collective scientific assessment of artisanal fishing in Haiti, which the Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Ressources Naturelles et du Développement Rural (MARNDR) requested and financed with the Inter-American Development Bank, starting in 2018. It builds an inventory from the literature on Haiti and from international biodiversity databases (OBIS, GBIF), assigns species to ten assemblages by habitat and behavior, and maps the bathymetric and spatial distribution of the species that carry the most commercial interest.

Later chapters cover the features of coral reef fish (sequential hermaphroditism, spawning aggregations, ciguatera risk, the ornamental fish trade), the functional habitats essential to fishery resources such as seagrass beds, mangroves and reefs, and Haiti's commitments on threatened species under the Convention on Biological Diversity. The recommendations call for observer campaigns, an updated species reference list with Haitian Creole names, deeper fishing grounds beyond the 50 m isobath, a census of essential habitats, and closer cooperation between the MARNDR and the Ministère de l'Environnement.