Study carried out in fishing communities finds that a third of the main fish species are threatened and put food security at risk
The worldwide depletion of schools, the reduction in the diversity of what is caught and the reduction in the size of fish captured are major challenges for fishing activities. Addressing these issues involves developing shoal conservation and sustainable fishing policies.
Such problems are not only linked to the macroeconomic aspect of the fishing and aquaculture industry, responsible for supplying the world market with marine animal protein. There are economic-ecological aspects linked to small-scale fishing that escape the statistics of government inspection bodies.
These aspects involve artisanal fishing in small traditional communities, many of them spread along the coast of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, as revealed by a study that has been developed over the last 20 years in seven artisanal fishing communities on the south coast of Rio de Janeiro and in northern coast of the State of São Paulo.
The study led by Alpina Begossi, from the Center for Food Studies and Research (Nepa) at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), recorded that a large part of the fish species caught by artisanal fishermen are in a threatened situation. Begossi is also a professor at Santa Cecília University and director of the Fisheries and Food Institute (FIFO), or Institute for Fisheries, Diversity and Food Security, of which she is one of the founders.
The researcher has worked since the 1980s in the area of human ecology of artisanal fishing communities on the Atlantic Forest coast and riverside populations in the Amazon region. Her working method consists of combining concepts and models from biology, ecology and anthropology to understand the relationships between the population and the use of natural resources.
Begossi and colleagues have just published the first x-ray of the situation of artisanal fishermen on the coasts of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the fishing grounds on which they depend. The work was published in the magazine Amble and is inserted in a Thematic Project coordinated by Begossi and financed by FAPESP.
“The research summarizes a series of projects that began in the 1990s, with researchers from Brazil and, currently, with others from France and Croatia who have been working with me since then,” said Begossi.
She refers to the co-authors of the article Natalia Hanazaki, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Priscila Lopes, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Renato Silvano, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Gustavo Hallwass, from the Federal University of Pará, and Svetlana Salivonchyk from the Institute for Nature Management in Belarus.
“We have gathered 20 years of consumption data from artisanal fishing. During this period, we recorded the species of fish consumed and noted their increasing scarcity over the years, which is in line with the evidence that some species were being overexploited, while others were included on the red list of threatened species”, he said.
With the huge set of data available, the group decided to bring it together in the work now published. Between 1986 and 2009, hundreds of interviews were carried out with artisanal fishermen from seven communities on the islands of Búzios, Vitória, Jaguanum and Itacuruçá and in three coastal locations (Puruba, Picinguaba and Praia Grande/Paraty).
The questionnaire applied in the interviews with the fishermen was open-ended and involved questions such as “Did you eat fish for dinner yesterday?”, “What fish?”, “And for lunch?”.
Between 70 and 110 species of fish are captured by artisanal and commercial fisheries in the region. The eight species most frequently mentioned by interviewees were anchovies (Pomatomus saltatrix), hake (Cynoscion sp.), croaker (Micropogonias furnieri), grouper (Epinephelus marginatus), swordfish (Trichiurus lepturus), xarelete (Caranx sp.), mullet (Mugil curema) and imbetara or betara (Menticirrhus americanus).
Of a total of 65 species mentioned by fishermen in 347 interviews and more than 1,5 collections of consumption, around 33% have seen a reduction in population since the beginning of the study in 1986, while for 54% of the species captured the situation of their Stocks are unknown according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
According to the authors, the growing scarcity of such species impacts food security and the livelihood of artisanal fishermen who depend on resources from their catches both to feed their families and to supplement their income.
Most of the species mentioned are overlooked by commercial fishing due to the low volume of schools. For this reason, they have greater individual value and are supplied to specialized restaurants on the Rio-São Paulo axis.
“In response to the threat to schools, the Brazilian government has already established several prohibitions on the capture of endangered species, without, however, including fisheries management measures and without including priorities in the study of these species,” said Begossi.
“If, on the one hand, this policy aims to protect and recover fish stocks, on the other hand, it constitutes a threat to small-scale fishing and the livelihood of artisanal fishermen and their families. The solution is not in a pure and simple ban on fishing for these species, but in their sustainable management,” he said.
There is also the issue of dietary diversity. “The species captured by artisanal fishing are those that guarantee our food diversity. Favorite fish, such as grouper or sea bass (Centropomus undecimalis), come from artisanal fishing. None of them come from industrial fishing,” said the researcher.
“There are species that were common in the 1980s, such as grouper, but have become quite rare. Today grouper are still found, but smaller in size. A fish of the same genus as grouper (Epinephelus niveatus), this one is no longer seen. It is no longer mentioned by fishermen. It’s a critical case,” he said.
The work of Begossi and colleagues highlights the need to gather more and better biological and ecological data on marine species off the coast of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. According to her, this data is “urgently needed” to help promote the conservation and management of these species.
“Is our option to allow these fish to disappear? Is our choice from now on to only eat three or four species of fish, those provided by aquaculture, such as tilapia and salmon? Is this the future we want?”, he said.
The article Threatened fish and fishers along the Brazilian Atlantic Forest Coast (doi:10.1007/s13280-017-0931-9), by Alpina Begossi, Svetlana Salivonchyk, Gustavo Hallwass, Natalia Hanazaki, Priscila FM Lopes and Renato AM Silvano, can be read at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13280-017-0931-9.
