Abstract
Citizen science is a rapidly growing field with well-designed and run citizen science projects providing substantial benefits for conservation and management. Marine citizen science presents a unique set of challenges and lags behind terrestrial citizen science, but also provides significant opportunities to work in data-poor fisheries. This paper analyses case studies of citizen science projects developed in collaboration with small-scale fishing communities in Mexico´s Pacific Ocean, Gulf of California and Caribbean Sea. The design and performance of these projects were evaluated against the previously published Ten Principles of Citizen Science, and Scientific Stages of Inquiry. Our results suggest that fisheries monitoring, submarine monitoring of no take zones, oceanographic monitoring, and the use of species identification apps by fishers meet the requirements of the published guidelines and are effective tools for involving the small-scale fishing community in science. Translating effective citizen science projects in to effective fishery management however is still at an early stage. Whilst citizen science data have been used locally by communities to adapt fishing practices, calculate recommendations for total allowable catches, establish and evaluate no take zones and detect range extensions of species affected by climate change, challenges remain regarding how to garner official recognition for the data, incorporate these growing sources of data into national policy, and use the data for adaptive management regimes at the national level.
Highlights
Documenting fishers’ local and traditional knowledge for the purpose of fisheries science has been commonplace for centuries (Johannes, 1981; Murray et al, 2008); fishers have more often been the studied group rather than contributing scientists (Hind, 2014)
The document co-authors represent civil society and governmental organizations that implement citizen science projects related to Mexican fisheries
During two workshops (August 2018, February 2019) the co-authors developed a list of 12 fishery citizen science projects currently operating in Mexico
Summary
Documenting fishers’ local and traditional knowledge for the purpose of fisheries science has been commonplace for centuries (Johannes, 1981; Murray et al, 2008); fishers have more often been the studied group rather than contributing scientists (Hind, 2014). Citizen science has become a growing field (Follett and Strezov, 2015; Hecker et al, 2018a) that has attracted international attention as a way of generating both large datasets and environmental awareness in target groups It is increasingly becoming recognized as its own field of investigation (Jordan et al, 2015), with citizen science agencies and associations being launched, both as government departments and non-profit organizations. Bonney et al (2014) want “citizen science” to describe any project that produces reliable data and information that can be used by anyone (scientists, policy-makers, the public) under the same system of peer review that applies to conventional science This makes citizen science a flexible concept that is often used synonymously with participatory science. Participatory yet structured processes that engage nonscientists in data collection, monitoring and research
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