Integration of fishers’ ecological knowledge in fisheries biology andmanagement : a proposal for the case of the artisanal coastal fisheries of Galicia(NW Spain)

• Main Authors: Freire Botana, Juan Manuel, García Allut, Antonio
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 1999

The fisheries crisis of the last decades and the overexploitation of a great number of stocks haverevealed that the scientific knowledge available about the dynamics of the marine ecosystems andneeded for the management of the fisheries is inadequate. This problem is critical when themanagement of coastal ecosystems and artisanal fisheries is involved. These systems show a greatcomplexity due to the high number of human factors that influence their functioning (relateddirectly to the exploitation of fisheries resources, but also to other types of activities that originatemodifications and destruction of habitats) and to the number of components involved in the fishingactivity (usually multispecific, multigear, with a diversified fleet that shows a complex spatialpattern of activity). Moreover, a great number of stocks exploited by coastal artisanal fisheries areinvertebrates with a population dynamics that no fits in the finfish models. The efficient andsustainable management of these resources is in general not possible using models designed tofinfish stocks exploited by industrial fleets.We analyze the present state of the coastal fisheries in Galicia (NW Spain), paying special attentionto the state of the art of the scientific knowledge available, the socioeconomical context, and to themanagement policies in use. In this sense, the main problems of the present policy directed to theachievement of scientific data and to the management of resources will be identified. We propose tomodify the strategies of research in the fishery sciences to introduce the traditional ecologicalknowledge of the fishers in the management process. This kind of information should constitute acomplimentary source to get new knowledge, and for this goal we propose to process it using themechanisms and tools of the Artificial Inteligence to formalize, objectify and integrate it in thefisheries biology and marine ecology. Some case studies based in this approach will be presented.