Fishing agreements in the lower Amazon: for gain and restraint

Abstract

Co-management agreements, whereby community rules for the management of local floodplain lake fisheries are legalised and enforced by the government, have become common in the lower Amazon. Agreements are intended to limit exploitation, in particular by commercial boats, to raise stock abundance and fisheries productivity for the benefit of local subsistence-oriented fishers and for conservation. A spatially replicated observational study was carried out to evaluate the performance of fishing agreements in terms of perceived rule compliance and actual impacts on fishing activities, catch and catch per unit of effort (CPUE, a measure of fisheries productivity and proxy for stock abundance). Perceived rule compliance was high, and this was corroborated by observed changes in fishing practices. Catch per unit of effort was significantly higher (by 48% on average) in areas subject to fishing agreements than in control areas without. Most likely this effect was attributable to the effective exclusion of mobile commercial fishing boats. Household fishing effort and catch in local communities were not significantly affected by the agreements, although a tendency towards slightly higher catches at lower effort was noticeable. In conclusion, the co-management agreements have led to greater local control over resources and brought significant productivity and conservation benefits. K E Y W O R D S :Amazon, co-management, fishing, floodplain lakes, productivity.

Rainforest metropolis casts 1,000-km defaunation shadow

“…One increasingly popular use of harvester interviews is the collection of catch and effort data, to undertake analyses of catch, effort, and CPUE. Commercial CPUE is probably the most widely used index of abundance in fisheries (47), and is being increasingly commonly used in studies of freshwater fisheries (48)(49)(50).…”

Fishers' knowledge identifies environmental changes and fish abundance trends in impounded tropical rivers

“…Interviews with fishers have previously been used to analyze fishing dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon (Begossi et al 1999, Almeida et al 2009), but interview data have not been compared to biological or fisheries data collected in the same time and place. The observed positive and significant correlation between the interview and fish landing data in the Lower Tocantins River indicate that the fishers' answers accurately reflect their behavior, thus providing additional support regarding the strength of the interview method.…”

“…The gear restrictions may be complete (banning of the gear), seasonal, or based on gear specifications, such as gill net mesh sizes (Gewin 2004, Almeida et al 2009, Khumsri et al 2009). According to our interview results, which agreed with the fish landing data, gill nets with mesh sizes of 7 and 8 cm were the gear most used by the studied fishers in the Lower Tocantins River.…”

Trophic ecology of Arapaima in Guyana: giant omnivores in Neotropical floodplains

“…Neotropical freshwaters support very high fish diversity and productivity (Lowe-McConnell, 1987;Lundberg et al, 2000;Allan et al, 2005;Martelo et al, 2008), which in turn provide protein and income for the vast majority of people who live near those waters (Bayley & Petrere, 1989;Almeida et al, 2009;Junk, 2007). Unfortunately, many exploited species are declining (Allan et al, 2005;Estes et al, 2011;Castello et al, 2013), and developing effective management and conservation programs will require, among other things, an understanding of feeding ecology and energy sources fueling fish food webs.…”