A social-ecological trap perspective to explain the emergence and persistence of illegal fishing in small-scale fisheries

Disentangling the socio-ecological drivers behind illegal fishing in a small-scale fishery managed by a TURF system

“…Although the legislation considers formal sanctions to poaching and illegal practices, these are informally allowed by the enforcement agencies. This suggests a vicious circle around the problem of poaching in TURFs: economic needs prompt poaching and deter fishers to invest in surveillance, in response the government administration strengthens formal sanctions but does not improve enforcement mechanisms, letting the SSF stuck in an illegality trap [8].…”

“…While data gathering for the assessment of SSF is improving, there are several caveats driving fish stocks to overexploitation that need urgent assessment. These factors may be classified into two interacting types: those related with failure of management and conservation rules [7] and those related with the socio-economic context as the loss of the culture of care and responsibility for marine resources prompted by strongly market oriented fishery policies [8].…”

“…Their usual spatially scattered nature impose serious challenges to monitoring, surveillance and enforcement to detect any non-compliance activities, facilitating illegal fishing [3,9,10]. It is a complex problem to solve, as numerous socio-economic factors are probably playing a key role, and it is likely to be highly conditioned by local context characteristics [8,14].…”

“…The absence of incentives to comply with fisheries normative has been pointed out as a significant problem for SSF, particularly in scenarios where neoliberal fishing policies fostered severe extractivism in detriment of traditional and more sustainable fisheries ( [8] and references therein). The common pool resources dilemma [15] has been in part solved using Territorial User Right in Fisheries (TURF).…”

Collateral damage? Small‐scale fisheries in the global fight against IUU fishing

“…Moreover, the sharp binary of what is “legal” makes everything else illegal by definition, undermining more nuanced understandings of legality/illegality as a spectrum of beliefs, values and practices (Benda‐Beckmann, 2002; Nahuelhual, Saavedra, Mellado, Vergara, & Vallejos, 2020). As illustrated in the Philippines, the use of beach seining, while illegal in the eyes of the law, is often tolerated by fishers, community members and local‐level government officials as compared to more destructive fishing methods such as cyanide or blast fishing (Eder, 2009; see also Bell, Hampshire, & Topalidou, 2007).…”