Local Ecological Knowledge Reveals Change in Seagrass Social–Ecological Systems

Abstract

It is widely recognized that humanity is currently facing multiple planetary crises, including the widespread loss of biodiversity and a rapidly changing climate. The impacts of these crises are often far reaching and threaten food security (SDG goal two: zero hunger). Small-scale fisheries are estimated to provide livelihoods for over one hundred million people and sustenance for approximately one billion people but face a plethora of threats and challenges linked to planetary crises. In this multi-country assessment (150 coastal villages across five countries within the Indo-Pacific), household interviews revealed how seagrass meadows are important to small-scale fisheries, particularly as a place to find and collect a reliable source of food. Interviews also revealed that habitat loss and the over-exploitation of these resources are placing people and their food security at risk. This study exposed how dynamic local ecological knowledge can be, uncovering personal opinions and responsibilities that result in the hybridization of knowledge. Here, we demonstrate the importance of using local ecological knowledge to incorporate shared values into management but also highlight that an integrated approach, pairing local and conventional scientific knowledge, is needed urgently if we are to meet the needs of people while simultaneously conserving biodiversity.

Sea urchin utilisation in Eastern Indonesia

“…LEK is an important but often overlooked resource that can reflect Local names for specific sea urchin taxa (one or more genera) were used at one to three sites (Table 3), although in some cases, the names used at different sites were very similar. Sunggiang bunga Maluku Tengah changes as well as the status-quo in social-ecological systems (Jones et al, 2022) and could be explored in more depth by future research programs.…”

“…Shallow-water gleaning fisheries in tropical coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs and seagrass meadows are increasingly recognised for their social and economic importance (Nordlund et al, 2018;Jones et al, 2022). The estimated mean income from Processed products typically include gonads from several sea urchins; b Estimated by dividing the estimated volume of catch sold by the number or urchins per serving given by the respondent selling unprocessed sea urchins across the study sites was IDR 1.94 million per collecting month.…”

“…This knowledge gap is especially evident with regards to gleaning (Furkon et al, 2020). One reason for the lack of data is that such fisheries are often unreported and mostly unregulated, despite increasing indications of invertebrate overexploitation (Anderson et al, 2011), including gleaning fishery targets such as molluscs and sea urchins (Lawrence, 2013;Parvez et al, 2016;Moore et al, 2019b;Alati et al, 2020;Tamti et al, 2021;Jones et al, 2022).…”