Assessing Knowledge Gaps and Management Needs to Cope With Barriers for Environmental, Economic, and Social Sustainability of Marine Recreational Fisheries: The Case of Spain

Abstract

The European Parliament is concerned about the lack of information on the relevance of nine million Europeans engaged in marine recreational fishing (MRF), committing Member States to encourage environmental and socioeconomic sustainability of the sector. The objective of this paper is to provide recommendations to guide research actions and management policies, based on the case of Spain, a key country because its complex administrative regimen and the intensive use of its coasts, including 900,000 recreational fishers. A review of the state of the knowledge was performed to identify research gaps, while governance challenges were identified in an International Symposium on MRF. In the last two decades research on MRF was remarkable (139 publications). However, public investment in research (€2.44 million in the same period) should be improved to cover knowledge gaps on socioeconomic relevance, on impacts on vulnerable species and on implications of global warming. The license system should be standardized to allow estimation of effort, catch and expenditure. Social networks, mobile applications, fisher ecological knowledge, and citizen science programs could help to develop cost-effective research and management. Sciencebased, adaptive policies should improve the allocation of resources between MRF and other stakeholders, introducing co-management to reduce conflicts.

First Assessment of the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Marine Recreational Fisheries

“…The overall reduction in recreational catches during this period could have contributed to protecting the reproductive period of some highly targeted species, especially Atlantic horse mackerel Trachurus trachurus, Atlantic mackerel Scomber scomber, annular seabream Diplodus annularis, comber Serranus cabrilla, Mediterranean rainbow wrasse Coris julis, surmullet Mullus surmuletus, and white seabream (Dedeu et al, 2019;ICATMAR, 2020). The reproduction of other important species in the Spanish Atlantic, such as the European seabass Dicentrarchus labrax in the North, or dusky grouper Epinephelus marginatus and rubberlip grunt Plectorhinchus mediterraneus in the South (Pita et al, 2020), may also have been favored. Reductions in local and foreign tourism contributed to lower pollution of coastal waters due to less discharge of urban wastewater.…”

“…4 In addition to the economic impacts derived from the reduced activity of recreational fishers in many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, the consulted experts highlighted important indirect effects on fishers' health and well-being. Experts anticipated a greater importance of these types of impacts in countries where social relevance of fishing is deeply rooted (see Cohen and Lemay, 2007;Rosenquist et al, 2011), such as in southern European countries (Pita et al, 2018b(Pita et al, , 2020, and lower impacts in those countries that imposed fewer restrictions on outdoor leisure activities, including recreational fishing, such as Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, or Uruguay. As a result of restrictions affecting access to the fishery, recreational fishers in general, and especially advanced fishers, showed lower physical activity and lower fish consumption.…”

Economic contribution and social welfare of recreational charter boat fisheries in the northeast Atlantic: The cases of Galicia (Spain) and Madeira archipelago (Portugal)

“…We have not found significant differences according to the gender of the anglers in the models we used to estimate recreation value with the TCM. However, it would be possible to increase the social benefits provided by recreational fishing charter boat companies by reducing the important gender gap in this activity (Pita et al, 2020a). Companies exploring this possibility should highlight the social aspect of the activity, little valued by the anglers in our survey, which included mostly men.…”

Length-based indicators for the management of sport fishery in Yucatan, Mexico

“…Despite this limitation, the information provided in this article represents a starting point in understanding the effect of sport fishing on fish populations in Yucatan. Moreover, from this, suggest continuous monitoring of the size structure of sport fishing, not only with the participation of fisheries administration and academic research institutions but also of fishers, sport-fishermen, tournament organizers and the general public, incorporating these actions within a framework of citizen science, such as suggested by Pita et al (2020).…”