Abstract
OverviewEight years of octopus fishery records from southwest Madagascar reveal significant positive impacts from 36 periodic closures on: (a) fishery catches and (b) village fishery income, such that (c) economic benefits from increased landings outweigh costs of foregone catch. Closures covered ~20% of a village’s fished area and lasted 2-7 months.Fishery Catches from Each Closed SiteOctopus landings and catch per unit effort (CPUE) significantly increased in the 30 days following a closure’s reopening, relative to the 30 days before a closure (landings: +718%, p<0.0001; CPUE: +87%, p<0.0001; n = 36). Open-access control sites showed no before/after change when they occurred independently of other management (“no ban”, n = 17/36). On the other hand, open-access control sites showed modest catch increases when they extended a 6-week seasonal fishery shutdown (“ban”, n = 19/36). The seasonal fishery shutdown affects the entire region, so confound all potential control sites.Fishery Income in Implementing VillagesIn villages implementing a closure, octopus fishery income doubled in the 30 days after a closure, relative to 30 days before (+132%, p<0.001, n = 28). Control villages not implementing a closure showed no increase in income after “no ban” closures and modest increases after “ban” closures. Villages did not show a significant decline in income during closure events.Net Economic Benefits from Each Closed SiteLandings in closure sites generated more revenue than simulated landings assuming continued open-access fishing at that site (27/36 show positive net earnings; mean +$305/closure; mean +57.7% monthly). Benefits accrued faster than local fishers’ time preferences during 17-27 of the 36 closures. High reported rates of illegal fishing during closures correlated with poor economic performance.Broader Co-ManagementWe discuss the implications of our findings for broader co-management arrangements, particularly for catalyzing more comprehensive management.
Highlights
As over-exploitation and global change threaten reefs worldwide, sustainably managing coral reefs is crucial to protecting both reef biodiversity and the food security of hundreds of millions of coastal people [1,2,3,4]
The Vezo within the Velondriake Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) have a mean income of $1.72 per person per day, below the $2 per day poverty standard, and they rely heavily on seafood protein for their food security (all $ figures presented are in 2011 international dollars, which adjusts for purchasing power parity (PPP); S1 File, S3 and S4 Tables)
The 36 closure sites for which we had adequate baseline data showed significant increases after re-opening in both octopus landings and catch per unit effort (CPUE) of octopus, regardless of their timing with the annual regional octopus fishery shutdown (Figs 3, S1 and S2)
Summary
As over-exploitation and global change threaten reefs worldwide, sustainably managing coral reefs is crucial to protecting both reef biodiversity and the food security of hundreds of millions of coastal people [1,2,3,4]. Because two-thirds of all reefs lie in developing countries [5], the goal of conserving reefs globally requires management strategies that can effectively balance both conservation and development goals This developing world setting frequently includes high population growth rates, low incomes, and weak national-scale governance [6,7,8]. Employing a broad array of measures, community and co-management arrangements around the world have produced positive outcomes for both conservation and development goals [9,13,16] When effective, such arrangements can help communities better manage their resources over the long term, helping them break from the tragedy of the commons, where open access leads to overexploitation, and from resource-dependent poverty traps, where natural resource depletion and dependence reinforce each other [17,18,19]. These research gaps hinder robust generalizations about the effectiveness of community and co-management approaches [9,11]
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