Artisanal fish fences pose broad and unexpected threats to the tropical coastal seascape
Dan A. Exton (),
Gabby N. Ahmadia,
Leanne C. Cullen-Unsworth,
Jamaluddin Jompa,
Duncan May,
Joel Rice,
Paul W. Simonin,
Richard K. F. Unsworth and
David J. Smith
Additional contact information
Dan A. Exton: Operation Wallacea, Wallace House, Old Bolingbroke
Gabby N. Ahmadia: Oceans Conservation, World Wildlife Fund
Leanne C. Cullen-Unsworth: Cardiff University
Jamaluddin Jompa: Hasanuddin University
Duncan May: Rientraid, Drumbeg Road
Joel Rice: Rice Marine Analytics
Paul W. Simonin: Cornell University
Richard K. F. Unsworth: Project Seagrass
David J. Smith: University of Essex, Colchester
Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9
Abstract:
Abstract Gear restrictions are an important management tool in small-scale tropical fisheries, improving sustainability and building resilience to climate change. Yet to identify the management challenges and complete footprint of individual gears, a broader systems approach is required that integrates ecological, economic and social sciences. Here we apply this approach to artisanal fish fences, intensively used across three oceans, to identify a previously underrecognized gear requiring urgent management attention. A longitudinal case study shows increased effort matched with large declines in catch success and corresponding reef fish abundance. We find fish fences to disrupt vital ecological connectivity, exploit > 500 species with high juvenile removal, and directly damage seagrass ecosystems with cascading impacts on connected coral reefs and mangroves. As semi-permanent structures in otherwise open-access fisheries, they create social conflict by assuming unofficial and unregulated property rights, while their unique high-investment-low-effort nature removes traditional economic and social barriers to overfishing.
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10051-0 Abstract (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10051-0
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10051-0
Access Statistics for this article
Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie
More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().