Local ecological knowledge of recreational fishers reveals different meridionalization dynamics of two Mediterranean subregions

Abstract

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 634:147-157 (2020) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13193 Local ecological knowledge of recreational fishers reveals different meridionalization dynamics of two Mediterranean subregions Valerio Sbragaglia1,2,*, Jacopo Cerri2, Luca Bolognini3, Branko Dragićević4, Jakov Dulćić4, Fabio Grati3, Ernesto Azzurro3,5 1Department of Marine Renewable Resources, Marine Science Institute, 08003 Barcelona, Spain 2Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), Via del Cedro 38, 57122 Livorno, Italy 3IRBIM, Institute of Biological Resources and Marine Biotechnologies - CNR, National Research Council, Largo Fiera della Pesca, 60125 Ancona, Italy 4Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Šetalište Ivana Meštrovića 63, 21000 Split, Croatia 5Stazione Zoologica Anthon Dohrn, Via Francesco Caracciolo 333, 80122 Naples, Italy *Corresponding author: valeriosbra@gmail.com ABSTRACT: Marine recreational fishers accumulate a vast amount of local ecological knowledge (LEK) during their fishing activity that can be of paramount importance for monitoring how climate change affects fish assemblages. We assessed LEK of recreational fishers to investigate the increase in the abundance of 5 northward-expanding indigenous thermophilic fish species in 2 Mediterranean subregions. We accessed LEK through an online survey completed by 794 recreational fishers (386 from the Adriatic/Ionian subregion and 408 from the Tyrrhenian/Ligurian subregion). The species perceived to have increased most in abundance were Pomatomus saltatrix (71% of replies) followed by Sphyraena viridensis (58%). The remaining species (Sparisoma cretense, Balistes capriscus and Coryphaena hippurus) ranged between 17 and 25%. Recreational fishers have a stable system of beliefs about meridionalization, which is perceived homogeneously between recreational anglers and recreational spearfishers. Our results indicate that latitude is negatively correlated with meridionalization in the Adriatic/Ionian, but not in the Tyrrhenian/Ligurian Seas, suggesting that meridionalization of the Adriatic/Ionian Seas could be a process that has temporally lagged with respect to the Tyrrhenian/Ligurian Seas. Our study demonstrates that LEK of recreational fishers can be easily accessed on a large geographical scale and can be useful to monitor changes in the distributions of data-limited species such as those studied here. KEY WORDS: Angling · Spearfishing · Adriatic · Tyrrhenian · Tropicalization Full text in pdf format Supplementary material PreviousNextCite this article as: Sbragaglia V, Cerri J, Bolognini L, Dragićević B, Dulćić J, Grati F, Azzurro E (2020) Local ecological knowledge of recreational fishers reveals different meridionalization dynamics of two Mediterranean subregions. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 634:147-157. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13193 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 634. Online publication date: January 23, 2020 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2020 Inter-Research.