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Small-scale fisheries (SSF) are a major contributor to local economies and provide employment in coastal communities throughout Europe where opportunities are scarce. These fisheries use a diversity of gears, although they usually exclude trawling and other intensive techniques. Even under these circumstances, interactions between SSF and the ecosystem need to be evaluated. Effective fisheries management and governance is needed to ensure that fully exploited stocks remain close to their maximum sustainable yield and rebuilding strategies are implemented for overexploited stocks.
However, many SSF in Europe target unassessed fish and shellfish stocks that are often in worse condition than the assessed stocks. The management of SSF is handicapped due to insufficient or unreliable data. Given that many of the marine ecosystem services provided by SSFs are at risk in Europe due to the current patterns of local and global drivers, this theme session will address some of the key ecological, socio-economic, and institutional dimensions of the problems related to data-limited SSFs, in relation to monitoring, assessment, management, and governance.
Papers are welcome on relevant topics including:
- An understanding of SSF management and governance arrangements in data-limited contexts
- Emerging innovative, simple, inexpensive tools and methodologies to address the management of SSF
- Assessment methods for species taken by SSF
- Barriers to the widespread implementation of these approaches
- Understanding on how to address uncertainty in data and policy recommendations
- MPAs and the management of data-limited fisheries
- Guidelines and protocols for the management data-limited SSF
- The transition from data poor to data rich: cases of high data availability in SSF with local and regional implications
- Case studies to understand the role of local institutions in the management of data-limited fisheries and the governance implications
- Case studies to better understand value and assess the cost and benefits of data collection for different types of data-limited fisheries
Selected papers from this session will be published in a special issue of Marine Policy.
