Long-term, Ecosystem-Scale Changes in the Southern Benguela Marine Pelagic Social-Ecological System: Interaction of Natural and Human Drivers

Abstract

-scale changes in the southern Benguela marine pelagic social-ecological system: interaction of natural and human drivers. Ecology and Society18(4) ABSTRACT. South Africa's small pelagics fishery is currently the largest in volume and second largest in value in the southern Benguela. It exploits short-lived, small pelagic fishes such as anchovy (for reduction into fish meal and oil) and sardine (for reduction as well as human consumption through canned products), and to a lesser extent redeye round herring and mesopelagics, largely for reduction. We explore the recent history (1940s to present) of the social-ecological system around this fishery. The natural subsystem, at the scales of the ocean environment and the ecosystem, is characterized by high interannual and documented decadal-scale variability. We characterize the human social subsystem at the scales of the fishing industry, legislation, and west coast fishing towns, and demonstrate interdependencies between the natural and social subsystems by following system-scale changes. The pelagic fishing industry has evolved to deal with variability through consolidation, diversification, and range expansion. Legislation has increasingly looked for conservation of the resource while ensuring economic viability of the industry, and hence factory-and vessel-related jobs. Fishing communities under apartheid stayed largely dependent on company-generated infrastructure, combining seasonal employment in the fishing factories with inshore fishing, targeting rock lobster and line fish. While the pelagic industry persisted and communities survived, the resource base for both offshore and inshore fisheries gradually eroded. The advent of democracy in the mid-1990s brought allocation of long-term fishing rights to individuals or companies under conditions of depleted inshore resources aggravated by a shift in the distribution of pelagic fish away from the west coast towards the Cape south coast in the second half of the 1990s. The resultant loss of employment and fishing rights in the inshore has generated community coping strategies that include poaching and challenges to the current Marine Living Resources Act, while the industry continues to expand by range and species, possibly further eroding the resource base. We argue that the situation in the pelagic social-ecological system is indicative of further loss of resilience to change. Coping with future longterm, system-scale change will necessitate careful long-term scenario planning among the various interest groups involved, joint research being one way to overcome the communications breakdown and initiate the joint planning process.

Synthesis: climate effects on biodiversity, abundance and distribution of marine organisms in the Benguela

“…(). Heavy fishing pressure in the 1950s to early 1970s off South Africa and until 1990 off Namibia led to the collapse of sardine stocks and heavy depletion of hake stocks, followed by consolidation and diversification of the offshore industry (see, e.g., Paterson et al ., ; and Jarre et al ., for reviews for Namibia and South Africa). More conservative fisheries management followed the declaration of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) for South Africa in 1977 and for Namibia in 1990 (Angola declared an EEZ in 1974, but the civil war prevented adequate enforcement).…”

case study from the southern Cape linefishery 2: Considering one’s options when the fish leave

“…[1][2][3][4] Coastal communities that rely on fisheries are subjected to an array of political, regulatory, socio-economic and biophysical stressors 5 , and remain exposed to multiple stressors [6][7][8][9] at various temporal and geographical scales. Response strategies to these changes, broadly classified as either reacting, coping or adapting (see supplementary material for a definition of concepts used in this paper), are also influenced by actions at multiple scales.…”

‘Thinking like a fish’: adaptive strategies for coping with vulnerability and variability emerging from a relational engagement with kob

“…Conversely, a fisher who does not interact with the ecosystem in this way will drive fish away and be unsuccessful in his endeavours. Such ecosystem-scale thinking as the fisher engages in converges with that of an ecosystem science which works with the entire biophysical realm in order to account for complexity in understanding, modelling and managing a fishery (Shannon et al, 2010;Jarre et al, 2013). Both positions assume the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans whereby the behaviour of one actor exerts an influence over other actors in the system.…”