New paper on São Tomé and Príncipe's artisanal fisheries

🐟 New OA paper! 🐟
Over four years, we monitored São Tomé and Príncipe’s (STP) Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) using app-based participatory landing surveys. Read the full Open Access article here: https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.70161

🎣 SSF contribute to nearly half of the global fish catch and provide a critical source of income and nutrition for millions of coastal communities globally.

🎣 Despite their enormous value, SSF are often left out of management plans and official statistics. Because these fisheries are so diverse, locally organised, and sometimes remote, collecting reliable data about how they work can be difficult.

🎣 In STP, 8% of the population is directly involved in the SSF sector, and 50% of the archipelago’s animal protein consumption comes from fish. Collecting reliable data on STP’s SSF is therefore a priority.

🎣 To improve our understanding of these fisheries, we implemented a participatory mobile device app-based fisheries survey in 23 coastal communities in STP. Trained fishers and fish traders collected high-resolution landing data from 12,403 unique fishing trips between 2019 and 2023 and recorded vessel activity on 620 sampling days.

🎣 Data collectors documented temporal shifts in gear usage and effort, as well as significant diversification in fishing techniques. This allowed fishers to access diverse fishery resources, showing how SSF have the capacity to adapt to resource fluctuation.

🎣 Nonetheless, despite the capacity of STP's fishers to diversify, a few species still dominate landings. This indicates that artisanal fisheries in STP selectively fish and heavily rely on a few abundant species, which should be considered a priority for management.

🎣 Our results also show that species richness and biomass for species targeted by artisanal fisheries were lower in São Tomé Island. This may be reflecting historical impacts of the higher fishing effort observed on this island.

🎣 Our findings highlight the value of participatory, mobile device-based monitoring for filling knowledge gaps in SSF, demonstrating how such approaches can guide conservation priorities while integrating resource users in fisheries management.

This research was funded by the Blue Action Fund and Arcadia and implemented by Fauna & Flora, Fundação Príncipe and MARAPA, and was part of a larger project aiming to establish a network of MPAs in São Tomé and Príncipe. Know more about the project here! https://www.rede-ampstp.com/

This is also the second paper of my PhD at CE3c - Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)