Use of video monitoring to quantify spatial and temporal patterns in fishing activity across sectors at moored fish aggregating devices off Puerto Rico

Abstract

Summary:A key challenge in small-scale fisheries that use moored fish aggregating devices (mFADs) is the ability to accurately quantify multi-sector fishing activity through fishery-independent methods. Here, we present a novel fishery-independent assessment of multi-sector fishing activity associated with a newly developed open access mFAD programme off San Juan, Puerto Rico. We identified three fishing sectors (recreational, charter and commercial) and 158 individual fishing vessels that routinely operated in the vicinity of the mFADs. The results indicate that daytime fishing activity varied by time of day, day of week, location and sector. During fishing tournaments, the data revealed that fishing activity increased threefold; across monitoring periods, for-hire charter vessels were the most consistent day-to-day user segment, and recreational activity peaked on weekends. Our study represents a new technique for rapidly identifying and detecting multi-sector fishing activity near mFADs and highlights the potential to gather comparable data wherever mFADs are deployed. The results are used to discuss how this technique can be used to assess the performance of mFADs to identify sector overlap and guide management in determining deployment patterns and facilitate the design of cost-effective surveys to estimate mFAD vessel activity, and potentially catch, of mFAD-associated species.Keywords: fish aggregating devices; fishery-independent survey; video monitoring; small-scale fisheries; recreational fisheries; Caribbean Sea. Uso de video para cuantificar los patrones espacio-temporales de la actividad pesquera de los distintos sectores en los Sistemas de Agregadores de Peces de Puerto RicoResumen: Un reto crucial en las pesquerías artesanales que utilizan los sistemas de agregadores de peces fijos (mFAD, por sus siglas en inglés) es el poder cuantificar con certeza la actividad pesquera multisectorial a través de métodos independientes de la pesca. En este estudio presentamos un innovador análisis independiente de la pesca para la actividad de pesca multisectorial asociada a los nuevos mFAD establecidos en Puerto Rico. Se identificaron 3 sectores pesqueros (recreacional, de alquiler y comercial) y 158 embarcaciones que rutinariamente pescaban alrededor de los mFAD. Los resultados muestran que la actividad pesquera diurna variaba por hora del día, día de la semana, lugar y sector. Durante torneos de pesca la actividad pesquera se triplicó, a lo largo de los periodos evaluados los botes de alquiler mostraron mayor consistencia por día y la actividad recreativa aumentó durante el fin de semana. Nuestro estudio plantea una nueva técnica para identificar rá-pidamente y detectar actividad multisectorial pesquera cerca de los mFAD y resalta el potencial de tomar datos comparables en otros lugares donde se coloquen los mFAD. Los resultados se utilizan para discutir cómo esta técnica puede ser utilizada para evaluar la ejecutoria de los mFAD, identificar solape de uso por varios sectores y guiar las decisiones en cuanto a...

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