Influence of fish aggregating devices on the livelihood assets of artisanal fishers in the Caribbean

Man-made structures in the marine environment: A review of stakeholders’ social and economic values and perceptions

“…natural versus artificial reefs or habitat preferences). Most papers dealt with case studies from the United States and neighbouring countries together with Israel and France (Murray and Betz, 1994;Ditton et al, 2002;Stolk et al, 2007;Shani et al, 2012;Kirkbride-Smith et al, 2013;Tessier et al, 2015;Belhassen et al, 2017;ten Brink and Dalton, 2018;Montes et al, 2019). The studies indicated that artificial reefs were favoured over natural reefs owing to the relative ease of access, although levels of satisfaction with artificial reefs were found to decline with diver experience (Belhassen et al, 2017).…”

Aggregative capacity of experimental anchored Fish Aggregating Devices (aFADs) in Northeastern Brazil revealed through electronic tagging data

“…Dolphinfish and tunas are commonly found associated to other coastal aFADs around the world and have been responsible for increases in income, food security and livelihoods of local artisanal fishers in different regions (Albert et al, 2014;Bell et al, 2015;Montes et al, 2019). Such aggregating devices were deployed in oceanic islands, where insular shelves are relatively narrower than continental ones (Quartau et al, 2014).…”

“…Catches of pelagic fish associated to FADs, including non-tuna species, have also been discussed, particularly concerning their value to sport fishing and food security in coastal communities (Bell et al, 2015;Campbell et al, 2016;. Besides the increase in fishers income, fish consumption, and even cultural identity (Albert et al, 2014;Montes et al, 2019), shifts in fishing effort from demersal species with slow growth and high longevity to fast-growing pelagic fishes may benefit demersal fish (Mbaru et al, 2018). Despite the environmental, economic, and social importance of these pelagic species, however, limited research has focused on their associative behavior (Capello et al, 2012;Forget et al, 2015;Rodriguez-Tress et al, 2017;Soria et al, 2009;Taquet et al, 2007), leaving, still, a remarkable lack of information on their ecology, fishing potential and, consequently, on the status of their populations (Gaertner et al, 2008;Moreno et al, 2016).…”

An Assessment of Artificial Floating Islands as a Method of Habitat Creation in Marine Environments

“…Floating islands created with natural weeds have also been used in freshwater lakes such as the Loktak lake in northwest India, as a fish aggregation device (FAD) for artisanal fishermen (Suresh, 2000). There is a plethora of evidence to show that fish associate with artificial or natural FADs such as objects moored on the seabed, suspended in the water column or floating at the surface (Nelson, 2003;Robert et al, 2013;Montes et al, 2019). The broad aim of this study was to determine whether vegetated AFIs are a viable method of habitat creation to support EFH that can form in heavily modified coastal water bodies.…”

“…In heavily modified coastal water bodies, artificial structures such as 'biohuts' have been installed to provide shelter for rocky shore fish species (Bouchoucha et al, 2016;Selfati et al, 2018). 'Biohuts' are a type of fish aggregation device (FAD) (Gooding et al, 1967) which can vary from objects moored on the seabed, suspended in the water column or floating at the surface and are largely used to attract target species for artisanal, sport or commercial fishing practices (Gooding et al, 1967;Robert et al, 2013;Montes et al, 2019). The traditional technique has been used for decades to improve pelagic fishery yield and information has been gained on how the location (Friedlander et al, 1994), size (Sinopoli et al, 2011) and design (Workman et al, 1985;Higashi, 1994) of FADs influences the associated species in relation to abundance, life cycle stage and spatial and temporal patterns of behaviour (Castro et al, 2002a;Capello et al, 2012).…”