Fisheries depredation by marine mammals is an economic concern worldwide. We combined questionnaires, acoustic monitoring, and participatory experiments to investigate the occurrence of bottlenose dolphins in the fisheries of Northern Cyprus, and the extent of their conflict with set-nets, an economically important metier of Mediterranean fisheries. Dolphins were present in fishing grounds throughout the year and were detected at 28% of sets. Net damage was on average six times greater where dolphins were present, was correlated with dolphin presence, and the associated costs were considerable. An acoustic deterrent pinger was tested, but had no significant effect although more powerful pingers could have greater impact. However, our findings indicate that effective management of fish stocks is urgently required to address the overexploitation that is likely driving depredation behaviour in dolphins, that in turn leads to net damage and the associated costs to the fisheries.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10745-018-9989-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The tendency of world media to villainize of sharks has likely contributed to a disparity in the distribution of research and conservation resources among threatened marine megavertebrates, with elasmobranchs losing out. Increased public knowledge on elasmobranchs can shape public attitude and foster and gain support for elasmobranch conservation. Through an online survey, this study aimed to evaluate the drivers of public knowledge and examine linkages between awareness of elasmobranchs and attitude toward their conservation. To explore the relationships and effects between the different predicting variables and public elasmobranch knowledge and attitude indices, bi- and multi-variate analysis and a partial least squares path model were used. The results indicated that the average public elasmobranch knowledge of the Cypriot population was moderate and the average public attitude towards elasmobranchs was relatively low. Marine-related activities and marine-related education were highly correlated with increased public elasmobranch knowledge and were the strongest predictors of the partial least squares path model which explained a high degree of variation in elasmobranch knowledge. Public elasmobranch knowledge was highly correlated with public attitude towards elasmobranchs. The findings of this study highlighted the importance of ocean literacy and education and provide insights into the mechanisms for developing and designing successful advocacy actions for elasmobranch conservation.