Castilla, JC; Defeo, O; ,
In Latin America the small-scale fishery of marine benthic invertebrates is based on high-value species. It represents a source of food and employment and generates important incomes to fishers and, in some cases, export earnings for the countries. In the review, we define 2 key concepts: small-scale fishery and co-management. We address the temporal extractive phases which Latin American shellfish resources have experienced, and the corresponding socio-economic and managerial scenarios. We include 3 study cases in which co-management and field experimentation have been used on different temporal and spatial scales: (a) the muricid gastropod (Concholepas concholepas) in Chile; (b) the yellow clam (Mesodesma mactroides) in Uruguay; and (c) the spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) in Mexico. We demonstrate that co-management constitutes an effective institutional arrangement by which fishers, scientists and managers interact to improve the quality of the regulatory process and may serve to sustain Latin American shellfisheries over time. The main factors supporting co-management are: (a) a comparatively reduced scale of fishing operations and well-defined boundaries for the management unit; (b) the allocation of institutionalized co-ownership authority to fishers; (c) the voluntary participation of the fishers in enforcing regulations; (d) the improvement of scientific information (including data from fishers) to consolidate the management schemes; (e) the incorporation of community traditions and idiosyncrasies; and (f) the allocation of territorial use rights for fisheries under a collaborative/voluntary community framework. Chile is identified as an example in which basic ecological and fishery concepts have been institutionalized through management practices and incorporated into the Law. Several factors have precluded shellfishery management success in most of the Latin American countries: (a) the social and political instability, (b) the underestimation of the role of fisheries science in management advice, (c) the inadequacy of data collection and information systems, (d) the poor implementation and enforcement of management practices and (e) the uncertainty in short-term economic issues.In the review, we also show that in Latin America, large-scale fishery experiments are starting to play an important role in the evaluation of alternative management policies on benthic shellfisheries, especially when accompanied by co-management approaches that explicitly involve the participation of fishers. Fisher exclusion experiments have demonstrated changes in unexploited versus exploited benthic shellfish populations and in the structure and functioning of communities. The information has been used by scientists to approach system elasticity. Ecological and fishery related knowledge has been translated into novel co-managerial strategies. The sedentary nature of the shellfish species analyzed in this review allowed localized experiments with different levels of stock abundance and fishing intensity (e.g., marine reserves or maritime concessions versus open access areas). This includes the establishment of closed seasons as de facto management experiments, which proved useful in evaluating the capacity of passive restocking of depleted areas and for the quantification of population demographic features. The precise location of fishing grounds provided reliable area-specific estimates of population density and structure, catch, and fishing effort. This allowed the allocation of catch quotas in each fishing ground. We also discuss the reliability and applicability of spatially explicit management tools. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Territorial User Rights in Fisheries (TURFs) fulfilled objectives for management and conservation and served as experimentation tools. The examples provided in our review include a comparative synthesis of the relative usefulness of alternative spatially explicit management tools under a framework of management redundancy. The cross-linkage between fishery experimental management protocols and the active participation of fishers is suggested as the strategy to be followed to improve the sustainable management of small-scale shellfisheries in Latin America. Finally, we discuss the future needs, challenges and issues that need to be addressed to improve the management status of the small-scale shellfisheries in Latin America, and, in general, around the world. We conclude that for the sustainability of shellfish resources there is an urgent need to look for linkages between sociology, biology and economics under an integrated management framework. Fishers, and not the shellfish, must be in the center of such a framework.
Marine & Freshwater Biology; benthic shellfishes, co-management, experiments, Latin America; sandy beach populations, lobster panulirus-argus, clam; mesodesma-mactroides, marine reserves, central chile, fisheries; management, human-exclusion, intertidal zone, conservation, comanagement