Studies investigating the local ecological knowledge (LEK) held by fishermen about the fishing resources have indicated that fishermen's LEK may have the potential to improve fishery management, by providing new information about the ecology, behavior and abundance trends of fish and other aquatic animals. Our major aim is to undertake a brief review of published ethnoichthyological studies with a focus on coastal Brazilian fisheries and freshwater fisheries in both Brazil and Southeast Asia. Based on such review, we provide 29 hypotheses on fish ecology based on fishermen's LEK and compare them with what is already known from the biological literature, using an arbitrary 'likelihood' measure: ''Low likelihood'' corresponded to unexpected hypotheses, which contradict existing biological data. ''Medium likelihood'' corresponded to hypotheses that could not be compared to available scientific knowledge. Hypotheses that agree with scientific data were considered as ''High likelihood''. We therefore discuss these three categories of hypotheses about several distinct topics, such as migration, reproduction, feeding habits, abundance patterns, ecological relationships between fish and their predators, and fishing pressure. Our results may contribute to the fisheries management and research in the studied regions and other similar places, besides raising the interest of biologists to properly include fishermen's LEK when planning and conducting fisheries surveys.Keywords Amazon Basin Á Brazilian coast Á Ethnobiology Á Fish ecology Á Fisheries management Á Human ecology Á Mekong River Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.

Lakes, reservoirs and wetlands cover a total area of about 7.8 million km2 and provide a rich environment for inland capture fisheries. Production from the world's inland capture fisheries has grown steadily to over 11.6 million tonnes in 2012, with almost 95% of the catches from developing countries. The sector is composed primarily of small‐scale fishers and provides employment to approximately 61 million people, of which 50% are women. Inland capture fisheries yield is only 6.3% of the global reported fish production (capture fisheries and aquaculture). However, it is proposed that this is an underestimate and actual yield may be several times greater. The apparent low proportion of fish provided by inland capture fisheries globally does not reflect adequately the importance of inland capture fisheries in today's society. A lack of accurate information renders analysis of existing data sets difficult and makes decision‐making problematic. Is the sector in serious trouble because of the multiple uses of and threats to inland water ecosystems? Is the sector stable and increased production due only to better reporting? Or, is the sector growing?

Tonle Sap Great Lake in Cambodia, the largest natural freshwater lake in southeast Asia, is situated within the fl oodplain of the Mekong River. Water levels in the lake vary by about 8 m between the dry season minimum and the wet season maximum when waters from the Mekong River back up the Tonle Sap River. The lake is highly productive -the annual fi sh catch from the Lake is estimated at between about 180,00-250,000 tonnes while the dai fi shery on Tonle Sap River annually harvests about 12,000 tonnes of fi sh migrating from the lake to the Mekong River early in the dry season. At least 149 species of fi sh are recorded from the lake and it provides habitat for 11 globally threatened and 6 near-threatened species of vertebrates including globally important populations of Spot-billed Pelican, Greater Adjutant, Bengal Florican, Darter, Grey-headed Fish Eagle and Manchurian Reed Warbler. It also supports signifi cant reptile populations including formerly Siamese Crocodiles, now hunted close to extinction, and probably the world's largest harvest of freshwater snakes. The inundation area around the permanent lake is highly modifi ed, with areas having been cleared for farming and settlements, and many semi-natural areas altered by burning, fi rewood and timber harvesting. Nevertheless some 200 species of higher plants have already been recorded. Threats to the lake include pressure through growth of the local population dependant on the lake for subsistence and livelihoods, overharvesting of fi sh and other aquatic species and potential changes in the hydrology of the River due to the construction and operation of dams which could reduce the amplitude of the lake fl ood cycle. However concerns that the lake is rapidly fi lling with sediment are unfounded.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to environmental recovery in some ecosystems from a global “anthropause,” yet such evidence for natural resources with extraction or production value (e.g., fisheries) is limited. This brief report provides a data-driven global snapshot of expert-perceived impacts of COVID-19 on inland fisheries. We distributed an online survey assessing perceptions of inland fishery pressures in June and July 2020 to basin-level inland fishery experts (i.e., identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations across the global North and South); 437 respondents from 79 countries addressed 93 unique hydrological basins, accounting for 82.1% of global inland fish catch. Based on the responses analyzed against extrinsic fish catch and human development index data, pandemic impacts on inland fisheries 1) add gradation to the largely positive environmental narrative of the global pandemic and 2) identify that basins of higher provisioning value are perceived to experience greater fishery pressures but may have limited compensatory capacity to mitigate COVID-19 impacts along with negative pressures already present.