Meanwhile, marine are facing increasing pressure on a global scale from widespread over fishing. habitat climate change and Bruno. 2010) and other anthropogenic effects (Halpern et al. 2008). These cascading impacts can severely erode the ability of marine and coastal ecosystems to absorb fishing pressure and continue to provide key ecological goods and services, thereby threatening the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on them for subsistence and income. In many developing countries, this situation is exacerbated by weak inst tutional frameworks and a lack of enforcement capabilities, both of which are necessary to design, implement and support effec- tive fishery resource policies (Andrew et al. 2007: Pomeroy and Andrew, 2011)