I’ve had the incredible opportunity during the last several years to work with the Center for Ocean Solutions‘ small-scale fisheries working group. This group includes leaders in fisheries ecology, marine social sciences, and the interdisciplinary study of social-ecological systems. Needless to say, I’ve been working alongside giants and have learned a lot! In 2013 we decided to focus our initial working group efforts on understanding a sustainable fishery that’s close to home – the wetfish fisheries (that’s squid, anchovy and sardine) of Monterey Bay. The PLOS One paper below details our results.
We took a social-ecological systems approach to investigate various drivers of change in the wetfish fisheries of Monterey Bay. Shifts in governance, climate, markets, and dynamics of interacting fisheries all play a role in determining what fishermen are catching, when they’re catching it, and fishery management outcomes. A major take-away from our paper is that managers should consider the ability of a fisherman to shift effort among fisheries. Promoting this flexibility through regulations can improve sustainability of small-scale fisheries globally.
Find the full PDF of the paper at this link: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118992