Dataset Information

Matching Fishers' Knowledge and Landing Data to Overcome Data Missing in Small-Scale Fisheries.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In small-scale fishery, information provided by fishers has been useful to complement current and past lack of knowledge on species and environment.

Methodology

Through interviews, 82 fishers from the largest fishing communities on the north and south borders of a Brazilian northeastern coastal state provided estimates of the catch per unit effort (CPUE) and rank of species abundance of their main target fishes for three time points: current year (2013 at the time of the research), 10, and 20 years past. This information was contrasted to other available data sources: scientific sampling of fish landing (2013), governmental statistics (2003), and information provided by expert fishers (1993), respectively.

Principal findings

Fishers were more accurate when reporting information about their maximum CPUE for 2013, but except for three species, which they estimated accurately, fishers overestimated their mean CPUE per species. Fishers were also accurate at establishing ranks of abundance of their main target species for all periods. Fishers' beliefs that fish abundance has not changed over the last 10 years (2003-2013) were corroborated by governmental and scientific landing data.

Conclusions

The comparison between official and formal landing records and fishers' perceptions revealed that fishers are accurate when reporting maximum CPUE, but not when reporting mean CPUE. Moreover, fishers are less precise the less common a species is in their catches, suggesting that they could provide better information for management purposes on their current target species.

SUBMITTER: Damasio Lde M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4503677 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Matching Fishers' Knowledge and Landing Data to Overcome Data Missing in Small-Scale Fisheries.

Damasio Ludmila de Melo Alves Lde M Lopes Priscila F M PF Guariento Rafael D RD Carvalho Adriana R AR

PloS one 20150715 7

<h4>Background</h4>In small-scale fishery, information provided by fishers has been useful to complement current and past lack of knowledge on species and environment.<h4>Methodology</h4>Through interviews, 82 fishers from the largest fishing communities on the north and south borders of a Brazilian northeastern coastal state provided estimates of the catch per unit effort (CPUE) and rank of species abundance of their main target fishes for three time points: current year (2013 at the time of th ...[more]

PMID: 26176538

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Project description:BackgroundAlthough bycatch of industrial-scale fisheries can cause declines in migratory megafauna including seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtles, the impacts of small-scale fisheries have been largely overlooked. Small-scale fisheries occur in coastal waters worldwide, employing over 99% of the world's 51 million fishers. New telemetry data reveal that migratory megafauna frequent coastal habitats well within the range of small-scale fisheries, potentially producing high bycatch. These fisheries occur primarily in developing nations, and their documentation and management are limited or non-existent, precluding evaluation of their impacts on non-target megafauna.Principal findings/methodology30 North Pacific loggerhead turtles that we satellite-tracked from 1996-2005 ranged oceanwide, but juveniles spent 70% of their time at a high use area coincident with small-scale fisheries in Baja California Sur, Mexico (BCS). We assessed loggerhead bycatch mortality in this area by partnering with local fishers to 1) observe two small-scale fleets that operated closest to the high use area and 2) through shoreline surveys for discarded carcasses. Minimum annual bycatch mortality in just these two fleets at the high use area exceeded 1000 loggerheads year(-1), rivaling that of oceanwide industrial-scale fisheries, and threatening the persistence of this critically endangered population. As a result of fisher participation in this study and a bycatch awareness campaign, a consortium of local fishers and other citizens are working to eliminate their bycatch and to establish a national loggerhead refuge.Conclusions/significanceBecause of the overlap of ubiquitous small-scale fisheries with newly documented high-use areas in coastal waters worldwide, our case study suggests that small-scale fisheries may be among the greatest current threats to non-target megafauna. Future research is urgently needed to quantify small-scale fisheries bycatch worldwide. Localizing coastal high use areas and mitigating bycatch in partnership with small-scale fishers may provide a crucial solution toward ensuring the persistence of vulnerable megafauna.

Project description:BackgroundAlthough fishers' knowledge has been recently considered into management programmes, there is still the need to establish a better understanding of fishers' perceptions and cognition. Fishers can provide novel information on the biology and ecology of species, which can potentially be used in the management of fisheries. The knowledge fishers have and how they classify nature is empirically based. It is common, for example, to observe that fishers' taxonomy is often represented by the generic level, one of the hierarchical categories of folk classification that is somewhat analogous to the Linnean genus, as it groups organisms of a higher rank than the folk species.In this study we compiled the knowledge fishers have on local fish, such as their folk names, diet and habitat.MethodsFive coastal communities widely distributed along the Brazilian coast were studied: two from the northeast (Porto Sauípe and Itacimirim, in Bahia State, n of interviewees?=?34), two from the southeast (Itaipu at Niterói and Copacabana at Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro State, n?=?35) and one from the south coast (Pântano do Sul, in Santa Catarina State, n?=?23). Fish pictures were randomly ordered and the same order was presented to all interviewees (n?=?92), when they were then asked about the species name and classification and its habitat and diet preferences.ResultsFishers make clusters of fish species, usually hierarchically; fishers of the coast of Brazil use mostly primary lexemes (generic names) to name fish; and fishers did not differentiate between scientific species, since the same folk generic name included two different scientific species. Fishers provide information on species to which there is scarce or no information on diet and habitat, such as Rhinobatos percellens (chola guitarfish, arraia viola or cação viola), Sphoeroides dorsalis (marbled puffer, baiacu), Mycteroperca acutirostris (comb grouper, badejo) and Dasyatis guttata (longnose stingray, arraia, arraia manteiga).Conclusionsfishers' knowledge on fish diet and fish habitat can be strategic to management, since their knowledge concentrates on the fishery target species, which are the ones under higher fishing pressure. Besides, fishers showed to have knowledge on species still poorly known to science.

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Dataset Information

Matching Fishers' Knowledge and Landing Data to Overcome Data Missing in Small-Scale Fisheries.

Background

Methodology

Principal findings

Conclusions

Publications

Matching Fishers' Knowledge and Landing Data to Overcome Data Missing in Small-Scale Fisheries.

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