Fishing dynamics associated with periodically harvested marine closures
Cohen, Philippa J., Cinner, Joshua E., and Foale, Simon (2013) Fishing dynamics associated with periodically harvested marine closures. Global Environmental Change, 23 (6). pp. 1702-1713.
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Abstract
Periodically-harvested fisheries closures are emerging as a socially acceptable and locally implementable way to balance concerns about conserving ecosystem function and sustaining livelihoods. Across the Indo-Pacific periodically-harvested closures are commonly employed, yet their contribution towards more sustainable fisheries remains largely untested in the social and ecological context of tropical small-scale fisheries. To address this, we use an interdisciplinary approach to examine harvesting dynamics that would affect sustainability, namely, fishing effort, yield, gear and method use, periodicity of harvesting, controls placed on harvesting and resource owners' decisions to open and close four fishing grounds in Solomon Islands. We compare these fishing patterns with those on surrounding, continuously open fishing grounds. Our study shows that total effort and total catch from periodically-harvested reef closures are low to moderate compared to reefs open to continuous fishing. When periodically-harvested closures were opened, effort in the closures was relatively intense, however, in most cases yield did not exceed annual benchmarks of sustainability described by previous studies. In some cases, harvesting during openings was restricted to a single taxon and single fishing gear and method, while in others there was unrestricted multi-species and multi-method harvesting. The duration and frequency of openings were highly variable, with open periods ranging from a single night to one month in duration, and occurring between one and 15 times per year. Fishing during openings was permitted for entire fishing communities in some cases, and only for specific rights-holding families in others. Decisions to open periodically-harvested closures tended to be based on immediate social or economic needs, and the openings provided a small boost to fish catch landed in communities. While periodically-harvested closures may alleviate fishing pressure in a small area of fishing grounds by reducing the opportunity to fish, openings of long duration or high frequency, combined with heavy or destructive exploitation, may lead to unsustainable harvesting within the area.
Item ID: | 31478 |
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Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
ISSN: | 0959-3780 |
Keywords: | taboos; fisheries; marine reserve; co-management; customary management; community based management |
Additional Information: | This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems |
Projects and Grants: | ARC Discovery Project grant DP0987537, ACIAR grant FIS/2012/056 |
Date Deposited: | 03 Mar 2014 02:40 |
FoR Codes: | 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050205 Environmental Management @ 20% 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050210 Pacific Peoples Environmental Knowledge @ 20% 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050209 Natural Resource Management @ 60% |
SEO Codes: | 83 ANIMAL PRODUCTION AND ANIMAL PRIMARY PRODUCTS > 8302 Fisheries - Wild Caught > 830299 Fisheries- Wild Caught not elsewhere classified @ 100% |
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