Exploring simple ecological indicators on landings and market trends in the South Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem

Abstract

Simple ecological indicators were applied to landings and market data from the South Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem to investigate pressures on the ecosystem over time to contribute to fisheries and ocean assessments in data‐poor ecosystems. The indicators showed an increase in larger, long‐lived and piscivorous pelagic species landings as well as an increase in offshore fishing over the past few decades. Indicators based on market data showed a decrease of not only the target species but also of some long‐lived and large‐size coastal species, resulting in an increase of previously undesired fish species in the markets. Each of the selected indicators expressed part of the picture, while putting all together resulted in a more comprehensive view of the historical behaviour of this system.

Shifting trophic architecture of marine fisheries in New Zealand: Implications for guiding effective ecosystem‐based management

“…These policies could be partly responsible for the observed temporal pattern of landings and MTI in the West Coast of the US EEZ (Caddy & Garibaldi, 2000), which display two periods of recovery in the 1990s and today, following peaks and declines (Figure 7). In regions where fisheries are still expanding to offshore and deeper habitats, such as on the Brazilian shelf, an increase in landings of large piscivorous species can still be observed (Perez et al, 2003;Pincinato & Gasalla, 2019), followed by a general increase in MTI (Figure 7). But larger landings of demersal fishes in recent years and scarcity of long-lived species in local markets could represent early signs of already-impacted communities (Pincinato & Gasalla, 2019), which can be seen as a decrease in MTI values in the most recent years (Figure 7).…”

180 years of marine animal diversity as perceived by public media in southern Brazil

“…For this we used the absolute abundance of species reported in newspapers per decade. These are simple ecological indicators that are used here to infer changes in fishing pressure, trophic level (fishing down the food web [ 60 ]), biological productivity, market preferences and technological changes [ 34 , 59 ]. Non-native and freshwater organisms (e.g.…”

“…For these two trophic categories we used references from Quimbayo et al [ 61 ], complemented with other literature [ 58 , 62 , 63 ]. When combined, multiple indicators are expected to provide a more comprehensive picture of historical changes in the system [ 34 ]. Fishing gear were standardised following the Fishing Gear Type of the ICMBio ( Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação da Biodiversidade Marinha do Sudeste e Sul ( https://www.icmbio.gov.br/cepsul/artes-de-pesca.html )).…”

“…Stock monitoring data are regionally and chronologically dispersed [20][21][22][23], and mostly limited to the second half of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries [20,[24][25][26][27]. In Brazil, there has been an increased effort to expand stock reconstructions with data collected from local fisheries [28][29][30][31][32][33] and seafood wholesale market data [34,35], but these approaches are inherently limited to only the most recent decades affected by large national fisheries subsidies, specifically from the 1960's to 1970's [36]. Overall, little is known about the diversity of targeted species and their socio-cultural, economic and market values before more recent political and financial support were introduced to the fishing industry.…”

Functionality and Effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas in Southeastern Brazilian Waters for Demersal Elasmobranchs

“…In addition, despite fishery activities being concentrated on the inner and middle shelf (Imoto et al, 2016), including inside the less restrictive protected areas (Carneiro et al, 2013), exploration of deeper zones has been increasing in the past decades (Pincinato and Gasalla, 2019). According to Imoto et al (2016), great amounts of demersal catches were obtained by industrial fleets in those regions, raising the threat over species that use the archipelago seasonally for feeding or for mating, while also using the surrounding fished area.…”