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.
1.Operat Wallacea, Wallace House, Spilsby, Lincs, England 2.World Wildlife Fund, Oceans Conservat, 1250 24th St NW, Washington, DC 20037 USA 3.Cardiff Univ, Sustainable Pl Res Inst, 33 Pk Pl, Cardiff CF10 3BA, S Glam, Wales 4.Project Seagrass, 33 Pk Pl, Cardiff CF10 3BA, S Glam, Wales 5.Hasanuddin Univ, Grad Sch, Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia 6.Rientraid, Drumbeg Rd,Near Kylesku, By Lairg IV27 4HP, Sutherland, Scotland 7.Rice Marine Analyt, 1690 Hillcrest Ave, St Paul, MN 55105 USA 8.Cornell Univ, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol, Ithaca, NY 14853 USA 9.Swansea Univ, Seagrass Ecosyst Res Grp, Coll Sci, Swansea SA2 8PP, W Glam, Wales 10.Univ Essex, Coral Reef Res Unit, Sch Biol Sci, Colchester CO3 4SQ, Essex, England
Recommended Citation:
Exton, Dan A.,Ahmadia, Gabby N.,Cullen-Unsworth, Leanne C.,et al. Artisanal fish fences pose broad and unexpected threats to the tropical coastal seascape[J]. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS,2019-01-01,10