Small‐scale fisheries may pose a serious threat to the conservation of marine mammals. At the same time various factors have led to the decline of small‐scale fisheries, often making them unsustainable. Current rates of biodiversity loss and the reduction of fish stocks and fisheries dictate a thorough understanding of fisheries‐related issues and the implementation of effective management actions.
The Mediterranean monk seal is one of the most endangered marine mammals on Earth; its survival in the eastern Mediterranean Sea is threatened by negative interactions with fisheries. A nationwide questionnaire survey among fishers and port police authorities was carried out in Greece to describe the main characteristics of small‐scale fisheries, and to understand the nature and assess the magnitude of negative interactions between the monk seal and these fisheries. Questionnaire information was verified by a second round of interviews during landings.
The main attributes of the fishers, their fishing boats, and their practices were characteristic of the small‐scale fisheries sector. Overfishing was considered the main reason for fish‐stock reduction, and negative interactions with marine mammals was considered the main issue for the fishing sector.
Monk seals were present, caused damage, and got accidentally entangled in fishing gear throughout Greece. Damage to fishing gear was recorded mainly during spring and summer, and on average affected 21% of all fishing trips and 1% of nets deployed during a fishing trip.
Based on these results, the implementation of general and specific nationwide fishery management and conservation actions are proposed. These actions are mainly aimed at improving fish stock status, changing the behaviour of the fishers, and mitigating seal–fishery interactions in Greece, while promoting the recovery of the Mediterranean monk seal in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Conservation actions for endangered species often require detailed data over large temporal and spatial scales, which are usually hard to obtain from traditional scientific surveys that operate at localized scales. In contrast to the terrestrial conservation world where citizen science has become nowadays a highly-relevant and useful tool to overcome such difficulties, Marine Citizen Science is still highly underrepresented. Using a dataset of 20 years of citizen science data and appropriate statistical modelling we developed a methodological approach to monitor the presence of the endangered, notoriously-elusive Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus. We used sighting data collected in Greece from 2000 -2020 and fitted dynamic occupancy models that allow inferring range dynamics while accounting for species imperfect detectability to estimate species occupancy.Occurrence of Mediterranean monk seals of all age categories combined, and pups separately, increased during the study period. Mediterranean monk seal occurrence increased also spatially: the distribution of the species in Greece increased by approximately 12.5% for seals of all age categories and by approximately 185% for monk seal pups. Most of 2 this distribution (i.e., 67 and 72% of the distribution of seals of all age categories and of pups respectively) was located within the boundaries of the network of protected areas in the country. These results indicate a significant range recovery of the Mediterranean monk seal in Greece over the last two decades and facilitate the prioritization of conservation actions for the species in the country. We demonstrate how occupancy modelling and citizen science can be used to evaluate the distribution of an endangered species and become a highlyrelevant and reliable tool in marine mammal conservation. We advocate the increased use of citizen science in the conservation of the Mediterranean monk seal in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
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