CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT OF COASTAL MARINE INVERTEBRATE FISHERIES IN LATIN AMERICA

The aim of the network is to document and disseminate new tools for conservation, management and governance of artisanal fisheries in Latin America, with special emphasis on coastal invertebrate fisheries. The network is focused on developing a set of guiding principles for achieving best practices with regard to an integrated and adaptive co-management as a way of governance, contributing to innovation management strategies of a system under multiple pressures (e.g. global changes in coastal occupation or climate variability).

In Latin America, artisanal or small-scale fisheries are the essential livelihood of many diverse coastal communities. However, after decades of intensive extraction exacerbated by coastal degradation, it is evident that much of the fish resources exploited with traditional methods, particularly invertebrates and their associated ecosystems, have varying degrees of alteration that limit their sustainability. Ensuring the existence of these fisheries and their associated ecosystems requires new perspectives for rational management, which include implementing resilient management systems and effective governance in conditions of significant uncertainty and drastic changes.

The critical evaluation of the success and relative merits of different governance modes, including co-management as an institutional architecture for sustainable invertebrate fisheries is a central issue analyzed by this network. This information will be used to disseminate successful examples of resource management in Latin America.

In some shellfish fisheries where solid co-management strategies and territorial use rights have been implemented, mass mortality has decimated many populations, suggesting that the effects of climate change or other disturbances may undermine assayed management strategies. In this sense, the network is currently evaluating the effect of climate change on these coastal resources through long term time series analysis. Such studies will also be used to assess the relative importance of fishing and climate change in exploited populations and components of animal communities. These studies also provide the basis for estimating the role of the dynamics of natural systems (at various scales) and the role of new governance systems tested in exploited populations or not.

The network comprises of national and international scientists from different disciplines:

Omar Defeo

odefeo@dinara.gub.uy