“Acceptable” and “unacceptable” poachers: Lessons in managing poaching from the Galician shellfish sector

Abstract

One of the salient features of shellfish poaching in Galicia (NW Spain) is that in certain cases the illegal extraction of shellfish is tolerated by licensed users of this resource. Since the Galician shellfish industry operates on a co-management basis the differentiation between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" poachers will impact both the management of the activity and the fight against poaching. The main objective of this study was to reveal in what circumstances and under what conditions shellfish poaching is tolerated by Galician shellfish-harvesting communities, noting its implications for political action. The conclusion was that “acceptable” poaching is associated with i) poachers being members of the community of licensed shellfish harvesters and ii) the harvesting of shellfish is either for self-consumption or performed by people acknowledged by the community to be financially hard-pressed and needy. In management terms, this tolerance of a certain kind of poacher required the introduction of informal community-based arrangements that made it possible to find pragmatic solutions to the problems of poaching, which in some cases resulted in a collective benefit for the shellfish-harvesting communities concerned. The raw data used in this study was obtained by performing 55 surveys and 48 in-depth interviews with leading members of fishermen's associations.