Fishing strategies and the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries in the eastern Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

Summary:The sustainable use of aquatic living resources is the cornerstone of the ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAF). Excess fishing effort leading to the degradation of fishery resources and significant economic waste is globally recognized by resource managers as a major problem for the implementation of the EAF and European's Union Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Knowledge of how fishers allocate their fishing effort in space and time is essential to understand how a fishery develops. Understanding fishing strategies is also vital for predicting how a fishery might respond to proposed management changes such as effort/area restrictions and introduction of a marine protected area, and for drawing up a management policy. Random utility models were used to examine the factors affecting fishers' behaviour in the NE Mediterranean. The probability of selecting a specific fishing rectangle was estimated using monthly purse seine data. The predictive inputs concerned both subjective behavioural and objective seasonal and technical-economic characteristics. The present study provided direct evidence of the important role that the strategic decision-making behaviour of fishers could play in understanding the way the industry will respond to changes in resource availability, market conditions and management measures under the EAF principle.Keywords: ecosystem approach; random utility model (RUM); discrete choice model; fleet dynamics; fishers behaviour. Estrategias de pesca y Aproximación Ecosistémica de Pesquerías en el Mediterráneo orientalResumen: El uso sostenible de los recursos vivos acuáticos es la piedra angular del enfoque ecosistémico en la gestión de pesquerías (EAF). El exceso de esfuerzo pesquero, responsable de la degradación de los recursos pesqueros y pérdidas econocómicas significativas, es generalmente reconocido por los gestores pesqueros como el principal problema para la implementación del EAF y de la Política Pesquera Común Europea (PPC). El conocimiento de la forma en la que los pescadores localizan su esfuerzo pesquero en espacio y tiempo es esencial para comprender como se desarrolla una pesquería. Entender las estrategias pesqueras es vital también para predecir como una pesquería puede responder en función de cambios de gestión propuestos como restricciones esfuerzo/área, introducción de Áreas Marinas Protegidas (MPA) y en la aplicación de la política de gestión. Para examinar los factores que afectan el comportamiento de la elección de los pescadores del Mediterráneo oriental se han utilizado Modelos de Utilidad Aleatorios (RUMs). La probabilidad de seleccionar un rectángulo específico de pesca fue estimada utilizando datos mensuales de cerqueros. Los datos predictivos de entrada incluían ambos comportamientos, tanto subjetivos como objetivos, estacionales y características técnico-económicas. El presente estudio proporciona indicios claros de la importancia que puede tener la estrategia en la toma de decisiones de los pescadores en la forma en que la industria responderá a los c...

Fishing gear allocation and catch landing of purse seine in southern coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia

“…Conversely, skipjack tuna only have a short fishing season and are irregular between fishing grounds. We anticipated that economic reasons have influenced the fishermen's strategy (Yew and Heap, 1996;Tsitsika and Maravelias, 2008;Maravelias et al, 2014). Therefore, in order to maximise profit, the purse seine fishers seek to capture as many fish as possible by changing the fishing ground seasonally.…”

“…Over the last decade, fishing management focused on fish biology (Myer and Cadigan, 1995;Tanaka, 2006;Watari et al, 2016) and paid scant attention to the fishing fleet, including fishing gear dynamics and fishers' behaviour (Hilborn 1985;Pet-Soede et al, 2001;Bene and Tewlik, 2001;Wiyono et al, 2006). As natural predators, fishermen develop and implement certain fishing strategies in response to constraints they encounter, and their intended objectives given their particular human, social, cultural and economic contexts (Hilborn and Walter, 1992;Pope, 2002;Maravelias, 2014).…”

“…However, further analysis confirmed that interaction between the fishing ground and fishing season only affects skipjack but does not affect scads. conditions in the fisheries sector, fishermen are allocating or redistributing the gear (spatially or temporally), modifying gears, increasing technology and expanding their fishing grounds (Hilborn and Walter, 1992;Pet-Soede et al, 2001;Bene and Tewlik, 2001;Wiyono et al, 2006;Maravelias, 2014). In a single area, the allocation of gear is a determinant of cost among fishermen, information uncertainty, gear testing and the objective of fishing.…”

Thirty years of fleet dynamics modelling using discrete‐choice models: What have we learned?

“…Across all 26 papers, a total of 61 casestudies were available, with a variety of models being fitted to data available for various fishing fleets. The most commonly used RUM techniques were the conditional (Hutton et al 2004;Vermard et al 2008;Marchal et al 2014;Girardin et al 2015) and multinomial (Dupont 1993;Mistiaen and Strand 2000;Berman 2007;Prellezo et al 2009;Maravelias et al 2014) logit models, nested logit models (Eales and Wilen 1986;Campbell and Hand 1999;Sutinen 1999, 2000;Smith 2002;Wilen et al 2002;Smith and Wilen 2003;Curtis and McConnell 2004;Andersen et al 2012;Bucaram et al 2013) and the mixed logit model (Eggert and Tveteras 2004;Pradhan and Leung 2004;Tidd et al 2012;Marchal et al 2014). The nested logit and the mixed logit models were often used to relax the non-IIA (independence of irrelevant alternative choices property) assumption associated with preference heterogeneity across fleets (Greene 2003;Train 2003).…”

Characterizing the complexity of the fleet dynamics for an effective fisheries management: The case of the Cíes Islands (NW Spain)

“…Ignoring this variability can generate a simplistic and biased vision of the fishing activity, which may lead to misinterpretation of how fishers allocate the fishing effort in space and time and of the impact caused by the fishing effort on the ecosystem (Salas and Gaertner 2004, Forcada et al 2010, Maynou et al 2011, Martín et al 2014. Second, fishers' behaviour is one of the main sources of uncertainty associated with the fishing systems, so ignoring the patterns of human interventions could undermine the effectiveness of management strategies (FAO 2003, Fulton et al 2011, Maravelias et al 2014.…”