Long-term fish surveys involving participatory citizen monitoring

• Published in: Hozen Seitaigaku Kenkyu = Japanese Journal of Conservation Ecology Vol. 28; no. 1
• Main Authors: Morosawa, Takahiro, Hagiwara, Tomiji, Kumagai, Masahiro, Arai, Satoshi, Okui, Tomiko, Iwasaki, Jyunko, Miura, Kazuki, 崇裕, 諸澤, 富司, 萩原, 正裕, 熊谷, 荒井 聡, 登美子, 奥井, 淳子, 岩崎, 一輝, 三浦
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Kyoto Ecological Society of Japan 30.04.2023
• Subjects: Acanthogobius flavimanus; Acanthogobius lactipes; Aquatic mammals; Biwia zezera; COVID-19; Fish; Fishing; Freshwater mammals; Gymnogobius castaneus; Hyporhamphus intermedius; Indigenous species; Introduced species; Megalobrama amblycephala; Monitoring; Mylopharyngodon piceus; Native organisms; Native species; Net fishing; Odontesthes bonariensis; Opsariichthys platypus; Pandemics; Salangichthys microdon; Seabirds; Japan
• ISSN: 1342-4327
• DOI: 10.18960/hozen.2213

An event-based, participatory citizen monitoring program called "One-day Fisherman's Experience" was conducted in Kasumigaura, Japan. The participants utilized set-net fishing, and examined and ate their catch. This monthly event occurred 142 times from April 2006 to January 2020; 2,177 people participated, with about 20 individuals in attendance at each event. The results of the monitoring revealed that native species, such as Salangichthys microdon, Opsariichthys platypus, Hyporhamphus intermedius, Acanthogobius lactipes, Acanthogobius flavimanus, and Gymnogobius castaneus, first decreased and then increased in number. Bitterlings, Ministry of the Environment's Red List species, were not caught after 2009. Information on alien species abundance was determined. The presence of Megalobrama amblycephala, a species from outside Japan, was confirmed in 2018 and Biwia zezera, a domestic alien species, first appeared in 2013. The last observation of Mylopharyngodon piceus and Odontesthes bonariensis was in 2010. These results suggest that public participatory monitoring is useful for understanding pat- terns of native and non-native species, and for Red List species monitoring. As a limitation, the monitoring efforts were dis- rupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.