Shifting gears: Diversification, intensification, and effort increases in small-scale fisheries (1950-2010)

Locally sustainable resource extraction activities, at times, transform into ecologically detrimental enterprises. Understanding such transitions is a primary challenge for conservation and management of many ecosystems. In marine systems, over-exploitation of small-scale fisheries creates problems...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-03, Vol.13 (3), p.e0190232-e0190232
Main Authors: Selgrath, Jennifer C, Gergel, Sarah E, Vincent, Amanda C J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Biodiversity conservation
Biology and Life Sciences
Commercial fishing
Conservation
Coral reef ecosystems
Coral reefs
Diving
Earth Sciences
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Ecosystem management
Efficiency
Environmental changes
Exploitation
Fish
Fisheries
Fisheries management
Fishery management
Fishing
Fishing equipment
Fishing gear
Gears
History
Marine ecosystems
Marine systems
Methods
Natural resources
Oceans
People and Places
Policies
Small-scale fisheries
Social Sciences
Strategic management
Sustainability
Trends
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Summary:Locally sustainable resource extraction activities, at times, transform into ecologically detrimental enterprises. Understanding such transitions is a primary challenge for conservation and management of many ecosystems. In marine systems, over-exploitation of small-scale fisheries creates problems such as reduced biodiversity and lower catches. However, long-term documentation of how governance and associated changes in fishing gears may have contributed to such declines is often lacking. Using fisher interviews, we characterized fishing gear dynamics over 60 years (1950-2010) in a coral reef ecosystem in the Philippines subject to changing fishing regulations. In aggregate fishers greatly diversified their use of fishing gears. However, most individual fishers used one or two gears at a time (mean number of fishing gears < 2 in all years). Individual fishing effort (days per year) was fairly steady over the study period, but cumulative fishing effort by all fishers increased 240%. In particular, we document large increases in total effort by fishers using nets and diving. Other fishing gears experienced less pronounced changes in total effort over time. Fishing intensified through escalating use of non-selective, active, and destructive fishing gears. We also found that policies promoting higher production over sustainability influenced the use of fishing gears, with changes in gear use persisting decades after those same policies were stopped. Our quantitative evidence shows dynamic changes in fishing gear use over time and indicates that gears used in contemporary small-scale fisheries impact oceans more than those used in earlier decades.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0190232