Abstract
Abstract Many coastal communities depend on ecosystems for goods and services that contribute to human well‐being. As long‐standing interactions between people and nature are modified by global environmental change, dynamic and diversified livelihood strategies that enable seasonal adaptation will be critical for vulnerable coastal communities. However, the success of such strategies depends on a range of poorly understood influences. Gleaning, the hand‐based collection of marine organisms from littoral habitats, provides an interesting case study of dynamic change in social‐ecological interactions. It is an important coastal livelihood strategy, yet seasonal gleaning dynamics have not been empirically explored in contemporary communities. We examined seasonal gleaning in eight coastal communities on Atauro Island, Timor‐Leste, using household surveys and satellite‐derived maps of shallow‐water benthic habitats. Our analysis explored the factors affecting household decisions to glean in each season, the relationship between gleaning and seafood consumption, and seasonal gleaning pressure on near‐shore coastal resources. Dynamic marine harvesting strategies differed among households and gleaning activity was seasonally heterogeneous. Not all gleaning households gleaned during the season characterised by rough sea conditions despite rough season gleaning being associated with greater seafood consumption stability among seasons. Households also gleaned less regularly, and catches were smaller, in the rough season. Differences in seasonal participation in gleaning were explained mostly by type and extent of shallow habitat proximate to a community. In the calm season, household gleaning was positively related to the total area of shallow habitat, and in the rough season the percentage of hard‐bottom shallow habitat was also an important predictor of gleaning activity. Our findings illustrate how changes in the biophysical environment mediate human–nature interactions at fine scales through time and space. Consequently, this research highlights the importance of context‐specific perspectives for understanding drivers and dynamics in fishing pressure on littoral ecosystems, access to ecosystem benefits and limits to adaptation. Factors influencing when livelihood activities are feasible and desirable are important for evaluating the social impacts of climate change, particularly in the context of rural communities in the Global South. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Highlights
Understanding how coastal communities interact with and depend on local ecosystems is key to sustainably managing coastal socialecological systems in a rapidly changing world
We focused on the following questions: (a) How does gleaning, as part of household marine harvesting strategies, vary seasonally? (b) What is the relationship between gleaning and seasonal variability in seafood consumption? (c) What determines the decision to glean in different seasons? Our results present a finegrained perspective of how people interact with littoral habitats through seasonal gleaning and offer insights into dynamic and context-specific human–nature relationships
Our results demonstrate how temporal aspects of access affect the ability of households to benefit from littoral ecosystems as a source of seafood during periods of food scarcity. These findings support other research that has highlighted how spatial factors determine the ability of small-scale fishers to adapt to normal environmental variability (Sievanen, 2014) and the importance of understanding how dynamic mechanisms of access determine who benefits from coastal ecosystem services (Daw et al, 2011), including as a source of food security (Foale et al, 2013)
Summary
Understanding how coastal communities interact with and depend on local ecosystems is key to sustainably managing coastal socialecological systems in a rapidly changing world. Interactions between people and coastal environments, including fishing and gleaning, are a means to material gain but they represent relationships to nature that are valued in themselves and contribute to quality of life. Through indigenous perspectives that recognise an interconnected web between all animate life and inanimate things, fisheries represent a set of responsibilities and relationships with other people and the environment (McMillan & Prosper, 2016) These relational values are defined as the ‘[P]references, principles, virtues about/based on meaning-saturated relationships’ (Chan et al, 2018) and encompass a diversity of tangible and intangible values, rooted in human–nature interactions (unlike intrinsic values) and are distinct from instrumental values by being non-substitutable (Himes & Muraca, 2018). Little research has empirically explored seasonal dynamics and drivers of gleaning in contemporary communities and, in the context of a changing climate, there is a pressing need to understand how access to gleaning areas and seasonal weather conditions influence how people interact with littoral ecosystems. We focused on the following questions: (a) How does gleaning, as part of household marine harvesting strategies, vary seasonally? (b) What is the relationship between gleaning and seasonal variability in seafood consumption? (c) What determines the decision to glean in different seasons? Our results present a finegrained perspective of how people interact with littoral habitats through seasonal gleaning and offer insights into dynamic and context-specific human–nature relationships
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