Recreational fisheries are culturally and economically important around the world. Recent research emphasizes that understanding and managing these systems requires a social–ecological perspective. We systematically reviewed quantitative social–ecological models of marine and freshwater recreational fisheries to summarize their conceptualization of social, ecological, and social–ecological dynamics and identify research frontiers. From a candidate set of 626 studies published between 1975 and 2018, 49 met criteria for inclusion in our review. These studies, though diverse in terms of focal species and processes considered, were geographically limited to a few locations and ignored large regions of the globe where recreational fishing is important. There were also important gaps in the social and ecological processes that were included in published models. Reflecting on these patterns in the context of previous conceptual frameworks, we define five key frontiers for future work: 1) exploring the implications of social and behavioural processes like heuristics, social norms, and information sharing for angler decisions and fishery dynamics; 2) modelling governance with more realistic complexity; 3) incorporating ideas from resilience thinking and complex adaptive systems, including slow variables, destabilizing feedbacks, surprises and diversity; 4) considering key ideas in fisheries systems, including spatial and temporal effort dynamics, catch hyperstability, and stocking; and 5) thinking synthetically about the models that we use to describe social–ecological dynamics in recreational fisheries, via explicit comparisons and formal integration with data. Exploration of these frontiers, while remembering the distinction between model complexity and model usefulness, will improve our ability to understand and sustain recreational fisheries.
- Award ID(s):
- 1716066
- PAR ID:
- 10287732
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture
- ISSN:
- 2330-8249
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 20
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
Abstract -
Recreational fisheries have high economic worth, valued at US$190 billion globally. An important, but underappreciated, secondary value of recreational catch is its role as a source of food. This contribution is poorly understood due to difficulty in estimating recreational harvest at spatial scales beyond a single system, as traditionally estimated from individual creel surveys. Here, we address this gap using 28‐year creel surveys of ~300 Wisconsin inland lakes. We develop a statistical model of recreational harvest for individual lakes and then scale‐up to unsurveyed lakes (3,769 lakes; 73% of statewide lake surface area). We generate a statewide estimate of recreational lake harvest of ~4,200 metric tons and an estimated annual angler consumption rate of ~1.1 kg, nearly equal to the total estimated United States per capita freshwater fish consumption. An important ecosystem service, recreational harvest makes significant contributions to human diets and plays an often‐unheralded role in food security.
-
Growing interest in apps to collect recreational-fisheries data requires that relationships between self-reported data and other fisheries data are evaluated, and that potential biases are assessed. This study compared results from a mobile-phone application and website for anglers (MyCatch) to results from three types of fisheries surveys — 1 provincial-level mail survey, 2 creel, and 17 gillnet surveys. Results suggest that an app and website can (i) recruit users that have a broad spatial distribution that is similar to conventional surveys, (ii) generate data that capture regional fishing patterns (2218 trips on 289 lakes and 90 streams or rivers), and (iii) provide catch rate estimates that are similar to those from other fisheries-dependent surveys. Some potential biases in app users (e.g., urban bias) and in the relative composition of species caught provincially were identified. The app was not a suitable tool for estimating fish abundance and relative community composition. Our study demonstrates how apps can or cannot provide a complementary data-collection tool for recreational-fisheries monitoring, but further research is needed to determine the applicability of our findings to other fisheries contexts.more » « less
-
Effective management of social-ecological systems (SESs) requires an understanding of human behavior. In many SESs, there are hundreds of agents or more interacting with governance and regulatory institutions, driving management outcomes through collective behavior. Agents in these systems often display consistent behavioral characteristics over time that can help reduce the dimensionality of SES data by enabling the assignment of types. Typologies of resource-user behavior both enrich our knowledge of user cultures and provide critical information for management. Here, we develop a data-driven framework to identify resource-user typologies in SESs with high-dimensional data. To demonstrate policy applications, we apply the framework to a tightly coupled SES, commercial fishing. We leverage large fisheries-dependent datasets that include mandatory vessel logbooks, observer datasets, and high-resolution geospatial vessel tracking technologies. We first quantify vessel and behavioral characteristics using data that encode fishers’ spatial decisions and behaviors. We then use clustering to classify these characteristics into discrete fishing behavioral types (FBTs), determining that 3 types emerge in our case study. Finally, we investigate how a series of disturbances applied selection pressure on these FBTs, causing the disproportionate loss of one group. Our framework not only provides an efficient and unbiased method for identifying FBTs in near real time, but it can also improve management outcomes by enabling ex ante investigation of the consequences of disturbances such as policy actions.more » « less
-
Abstract Historical information has provided key insights into long‐term ecological change to marine species and ecosystems, with value to fisheries. Yet, pathways to integrate these diverse data sources into fisheries decision‐making have not been clear. Here, we identify an array of biological, ecological, and social information suitable for contemporary science‐based decision‐making, derived from local ecological knowledge, historical archives, archaeological middens and palaeoecological material. We outline two broad pathways to integrate these historical data into fisheries decision‐making, demonstrating that data‐driven use of historical information is relevant across a range of management contexts. First, historical information can inform fisheries assessments that range from simple to complex, affecting indicators of stock status. Second, it can inform estimates of biological potential and social preference, affecting the choice of fisheries reference points. Using the Caribbean Sea as an example, we illustrate these ideas with case studies representing diverse species and historical data types. Integrating historical data can improve indicators of the current state of fish populations and result in management decisions based on a more complete understanding of a potential range of variation, avoiding shifted baselines. The urgency of this work is underscored by accelerating environmental changes and the rapid loss of invaluable historical information sources. By illuminating pathways, our goal is to increase the accessibility of these types of information and to underscore that scientists, managers, and resource users have roles to play in identifying and integrating relevant long‐term data at various spatial and temporal scales to sustainably manage marine fisheries.