Management policies impact fishers’ income beyond tolerable limits: The case of the Chilean TURFs in Central Chile

Abstract

Fish trade worldwide seeks sustainable fishery production which right-based-fisheries should provide. However, fisheries managed in TURF system (Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries), as occurs for loco (Concholepas concholepas) and kelp fisheries in central Chile, can turn out to be highly fluctuating. This can pose a challenge to fisher’s livelihood depending on the income variability this type of management produces. This work analyzes temporal variations of loco and kelp abundances and landings at increasing spatial scales, investigating which would be a TURF size that could dampen the influence of natural variations on fishers’ income enough for it to be tolerable. We analyzed loco and kelp abundance and landings data from hard bottom TURFs in Atacama (n = 22) and Coquimbo (n = 61) regions of Central Chile, which represent 81.4% of the total TURFs in these regions. Income variations less than 39% were considered tolerable, according to a study conducted by the National Consumer Service, where 61% of a person’s salary is necessary to cover essential needs in Chilean family. Loco and kelp landings variations exceeded that criterion at all analyzed spatial scales, suggesting that they cannot rely solely on those fisheries within a TURF. Even increasing the size of TURF including the coast of an entire region, does not dampen variability to a tolerable value. This explains the reason for former fisher migrations within these fisheries, something present regulations prevent, generating a complex situation which is necessary to revise in order not to maintain an incentive to side step regulations.