Caribbean Challenge SocMon : Team

Maria Pena
Project Manager
maria.pena@cavehill.uwi.edu

Ms Maria Pena is the SocMon Coordinator for the English-speaking Caribbean, responsible for promoting and supporting the use of SocMon in the Caribbean islands. She is the Project Assistant at the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus, who assisted the inaugural SocMon Caribbean regional workshop in 2003. She has participated in the Negril Marine Park and Tobago Cays Marine Park SocMon studies, conducted training in support of the recent Socio-economic monitoring by Caribbean fishery authorities project (which she also managed) and has been an invited presenter at numerous marine training courses and conferences. She was researcher and assistant manager in the CERMES project on Enhancing management effectiveness at three marine protected areas in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica and Belize, and has assisted in MPA-related institutional analysis in Dominica. She has a diverse wealth of MPA expertise.

Dr. Patrick McConney
Technical advisor
patrick.mcconney@cavehill.uwi.edu

Dr. Patrick McConney, Senior Lecturer at CERMES, the project’s lead agency, at the UWI Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. He formulates, implements and evaluates marine science applied research projects around the Caribbean, mostly concerning small-scale fisheries and MPAs. This has included the development of the SocMon Caribbean methodology, MPA management effectiveness, co-management and other institutional arrangements for governance. He has conducted several SocMon country-based and regional training workshops at monitoring sites and meetings and has supervised several graduate students in the use of SocMon in their MSc and PhD research.

Katherine Blackman
Assistant SocMon trainer
katherine.blackman@cavehill.uwi.edu

Ms. Katherine Blackman, CERMES MSc graduate and Research Assistant, conducted her MSc thesis, Information for the Negril Marine Park’s fisheries management plan using the SocMon Caribbean methodology. She assisted Maria Pena in conducting SocMon training workshops at project sites for the Socio-economic monitoring by Caribbean fishery authorities project and will continue to provide assistance in SocMon training in the Caribbean Challenge SocMon. Partnerships will also be forged or strengthened with key players in the participating MPA and fisheries authorities to foster ownership of SocMon and their monitoring programmes rather than treat them simply as passive beneficiaries of capacity development.