Dataset Information

Evaluating patterns and drivers of spatial change in the recreational guided fishing sector in Alaska.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the impacts of recreational fishing on habitats and species, as well as the social and ecological importance of place to anglers, requires information on the spatial distribution of fishing activities. This study documented long-term changes in core fishing areas of a major recreational fishery in Alaska and identified biological, regulatory, social, and economic drivers of spatial fishing patterns by charter operators. Using participatory mapping and in-person interviews, we characterized the spatial footprint of 46 charter operators in the communities of Sitka and Homer since the 1990s. The spatial footprint differed between Homer and Sitka respondents, with Homer operators consistently using larger areas for Pacific halibut than Sitka operators. Homer and Sitka showed opposite trends in core fishing location area over time, with an overall decrease in Homer and an overall increase in Sitka. For both Sitka and Homer respondents, the range of areas fished was greater for Pacific halibut than for rockfish/lingcod or Pacific salmon. Spatial patterns were qualitatively different between businesses specializing in single species trips and those that operated multispecies trips and between businesses with one vessel and those with multiple vessels. In Homer, the most frequently cited reasons for changes in the location and/or extent of fishing were changes in trip type and the price of fuel, while in Sitka, the most frequently cited reasons for spatial shifts were changes to Pacific halibut regulations and gaining experience or exploring new locations. The diversity of charter fishing strategies in Alaska may allow individual charter operators to respond differently to perturbations and thus maintain resilience of the industry as a whole to social, environmental, and regulatory change. This research also highlights the importance of understanding fishers' diverse portfolio of activities to effective ecosystem-based management.

SUBMITTER: Chan MN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5478146 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evaluating patterns and drivers of spatial change in the recreational guided fishing sector in Alaska.

Chan Maggie N MN Beaudreau Anne H AH Loring Philip A PA

PloS one 20170620 6

Understanding the impacts of recreational fishing on habitats and species, as well as the social and ecological importance of place to anglers, requires information on the spatial distribution of fishing activities. This study documented long-term changes in core fishing areas of a major recreational fishery in Alaska and identified biological, regulatory, social, and economic drivers of spatial fishing patterns by charter operators. Using participatory mapping and in-person interviews, we chara ...[more]

PMID: 28632745

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Project description:Small-scale fisheries are the primary users of many coastal fish stocks; yet, spatial and temporal patterns of recreational and subsistence fishing in coastal marine ecosystems are poorly documented. Knowledge about the spatial distribution of fishing activities can inform place-based management that balances species conservation with opportunities for recreation and subsistence. We used a participatory mapping approach to document changes in spatial fishing patterns of 80 boat-based recreational anglers from 1950 to 2010 in Puget Sound, Washington, USA. Hand-drawn fishing areas for salmon, rockfishes, flatfishes, and crabs were digitized and analyzed in a Geographic Information System. We found that recreational fishing has spanned the majority of Puget Sound since the 1950s, with the heaviest use limited to small areas of central and northern Puget Sound. People are still fishing in the same places they were decades ago, with relatively little change in specific locations despite widespread declines in salmon and bottomfish populations during the second half of the 20th century. While the location of core fishing areas remained consistent, the size of those areas and intensity of use changed over time. The size of fishing areas increased through the 2000s for salmon but declined after the 1970s and 1980s for rockfishes, flatfishes, and crabs. Our results suggest that the spatial extent of recreational bottomfishing increased after the 1960s, when the availability of motorized vessels and advanced fish-finding technologies allowed anglers to expand their scope beyond localized angling from piers and boathouses. Respondents offered a wide range of reasons for shifts in fishing areas over time, reflecting substantial individual variation in motivations and behaviors. Changes in fishing areas were most commonly attributed to changes in residence and declines in target species and least tied to fishery regulations, despite the implementation of at least 25 marine preserves since 1970.

Project description:Assessments of the effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPAs) usually assume that fishing patterns change exclusively due to the implementation of an MPA. This assumption increases the risk of erroneous conclusions in assessing marine zoning, and consequently counter-productive management actions. Accordingly, it is important to understand how fishers respond to a combination of the implementation of no-take zones, and various climatic and human drivers of change. Those adaptive responses could influence the interpretation of assessment of no-take zone effectiveness, yet few studies have examined these aspects. Indeed, such analysis is often unfeasible in developing countries, due to the dominance of data-poor fisheries, which precludes full examination of the social-ecological outcomes of MPAs. In the Galapagos Marine Reserve (Ecuador), however, the availability of long-term spatially explicit fishery monitoring data (1997-2011) for the spiny lobster fishery allows such an analysis. Accordingly, we evaluated how the spatiotemporal allocation of fishing effort in this multiple-use MPA was affected by the interaction of diverse climatic and human drivers, before and after implementation of no-take zones. Geographic information system modelling techniques were used in combination with boosted regression models to identify how these drivers influenced fishers' behavior. Our results show that the boom-and-bust exploitation of the sea cucumber fishery and the global financial crisis 2007-09, rather than no-take zone implementation, were the most important drivers affecting the distribution of fishing effort across the archipelago. Both drivers triggered substantial macro-scale changes in fishing effort dynamics, which in turn altered the micro-scale dynamics of fishing patterns. Fishers' adaptive responses were identified, and their management implications analyzed. This leads to recommendations for more effective marine and fishery management in the Galapagos, based on improved assessment of the effectiveness of no-take zones.

Project description:AimMapping the geographic distribution of non-native aquatic species is a critically important precursor to understanding the anthropogenic and environmental factors that drive freshwater biological invasions. Such efforts are often limited to local scales and/or to single species, due to the challenges of data acquisition at larger scales. Here, we map the distribution of non-native freshwater species richness across the continental United States and investigate the role of human activity in driving macro-scale patterns of aquatic invasion.LocationThe continental United States.MethodsWe assembled maps of non-native aquatic species richness by compiling occurrence data on exotic animal and plant species from publicly accessible databases. Using a dasymetric model of human population density and a spatially explicit model of recreational freshwater fishing demand, we analysed the effect of these metrics of human influence on the degree of invasion at the watershed scale, while controlling for spatial and sampling bias. We also assessed the effects that a temporal mismatch between occurrence data (collected since 1815) and cross-sectional predictors (developed using 2010 data) may have on model fit.ResultsNon-native aquatic species richness exhibits a highly patchy distribution, with hotspots in the Northeast, Great Lakes, Florida, and human population centres on the Pacific coast. These richness patterns are correlated with population density, but are much more strongly predicted by patterns of recreational fishing demand. These relationships are strengthened by temporal matching of datasets and are robust to corrections for sampling effort.Main conclusionsDistributions of aquatic non-native species across the continental US are better predicted by freshwater recreational fishing than by human population density. This suggests that observed patterns are driven by a mechanistic link between recreational activity and aquatic non-native species richness and are not merely the outcome of sampling bias associated with human population density.

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Project description:The prevalence and intensity of parasites in wild hosts varies across space and is a key determinant of infection risk in humans, domestic animals and threatened wildlife. Because the immune system serves as the primary barrier to infection, replication and transmission following exposure, we here consider the environmental drivers of immunity. Spatial variation in parasite pressure, abiotic and biotic conditions, and anthropogenic factors can all shape immunity across spatial scales. Identifying the most important spatial drivers of immunity could help pre-empt infectious disease risks, especially in the context of how large-scale factors such as urbanization affect defence by changing environmental conditions. We provide a synthesis of how to apply macroecological approaches to the study of ecoimmunology (i.e. macroimmunology). We first review spatial factors that could generate spatial variation in defence, highlighting the need for large-scale studies that can differentiate competing environmental predictors of immunity and detailing contexts where this approach might be favoured over small-scale experimental studies. We next conduct a systematic review of the literature to assess the frequency of spatial studies and to classify them according to taxa, immune measures, spatial replication and extent, and statistical methods. We review 210 ecoimmunology studies sampling multiple host populations. We show that whereas spatial approaches are relatively common, spatial replication is generally low and unlikely to provide sufficient environmental variation or power to differentiate competing spatial hypotheses. We also highlight statistical biases in macroimmunology, in that few studies characterize and account for spatial dependence statistically, potentially affecting inferences for the relationships between environmental conditions and immune defence. We use these findings to describe tools from geostatistics and spatial modelling that can improve inference about the associations between environmental and immunological variation. In particular, we emphasize exploratory tools that can guide spatial sampling and highlight the need for greater use of mixed-effects models that account for spatial variability while also allowing researchers to account for both individual- and habitat-level covariates. We finally discuss future research priorities for macroimmunology, including focusing on latitudinal gradients, range expansions and urbanization as being especially amenable to large-scale spatial approaches. Methodologically, we highlight critical opportunities posed by assessing spatial variation in host tolerance, using metagenomics to quantify spatial variation in parasite pressure, coupling large-scale field studies with small-scale field experiments and longitudinal approaches, and applying statistical tools from macroecology and meta-analysis to identify generalizable spatial patterns. Such work will facilitate scaling ecoimmunology from individual- to habitat-level insights about the drivers of immune defence and help predict where environmental change may most alter infectious disease risk.

Project description:Despite threats to human wellbeing from ecological degradation, public engagement with this issue remains at low levels. However, studies have shown that crafting messages to resonate with people's personal experiences can enhance engagement. Recreational fishing is one of the principal ways in which people interact with aquatic environments, but long-term data from this perspective are considered rare. We uncovered 852 popular media records of recreational fishing for an Australian estuary across a 140-year period. Using information contained in these articles we analysed the species composition of recreational catches over time and constructed two distinct time series of catch and effort (n fish fisher-1 trip-1; kg fish fisher-1 trip-1) for recreational fishing trips and fishing club competitions (mean n and kg fish caught across all competitors, and n and kg fish caught by the competition winner). Reported species composition remained similar over time. Catch rates reported from recreational fishing trips (1900-1998) displayed a significant decline, averaging 32.5 fish fisher-1 trip-1 prior to 1960, and 18.8 fish fisher-1 trip-1 post-1960. Mean n fish fisher-1 competition-1 (1913-1983) also significantly declined, but best n fish fisher-1 competition-1 (1925-1980) displayed no significant change, averaging 31.2 fish fisher-1 competition-1 over the time series. Mean and best kg fish fisher-1 competition-1 trends also displayed no significant change, averaging 4.2 and 9.9 kg fisher-1 competition-1, respectively. These variable trends suggest that while some fishers experienced diminishing returns in this region over the last few decades, the most skilled inshore fishers were able to maintain their catch rates, highlighting the difficulties inherent in crafting conservation messages that will resonate with all sections of a community. Despite these challenges, this research demonstrates that popular media sources can provide multiple long-term trends at spatial scales, in units and via a recreational experience that many people can relate to.

Dataset Information

Evaluating patterns and drivers of spatial change in the recreational guided fishing sector in Alaska.

Publications

Evaluating patterns and drivers of spatial change in the recreational guided fishing sector in Alaska.

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