Fisheries are complex social-ecological systems (Berkes and Folke 1998) in crisis, found in a wide range of countries with different ecosystems, fishing sectors, types of resources, communities, societies, markets and degrees of development. Therefore, the world fishery crisis is not a single issue but a series of complex, interdependent and multifaceted challenges, which require different strategies and tools to solve (Castilla and Defeo 2005; Worm et al. 2009). Large-scale industrial fisheries and small-scale fisheries (SSFs) are intrinsically different, leading to important implications for the potential effectiveness of management measures (Berkes et al. 2001). These different types of fisheries cannot be lumped together, as they operate on different scales and require different management solutions (Castilla and Defeo 2005).
SSFs, which mostly occur in developing countries, account for 40 percent of the world’s fish catches and provide direct employment for >90 percent out of 39 million capture fishers in the world (Chuenpagdee and Pauly 2008). In Latin America, SSFs constitute an important socio-economic component, with thousands of fishing communities and well over 1 million people directly engaged in the activity (Defeo et al. 2016 and references therein). Most small-scale shellfisheries in Latin America are vital to the livelihoods of coastal fishing communities, providing a key source of employment and high-quality food (Defeo and Castilla 2012; Orensanz et al. 2005, 2013; Defeo 2015). The commercial importance of small-scale shellfisheries have gradually increased as finfish fisheries have either reached full exploitation or experienced overexploitation (Castilla and Defeo 2001). The high unit value of mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms compensate economically for their comparative reduced landings compared to those of the industrial fishing sector (Defeo and Castilla 2005).
Latin American coastal shellfisheries have been mostly developed along extended coasts under open-access regimes, making their governance extremely challenging for two main reasons (Castilla and Defeo 2001): (1) the number of extractors, either authorized or unauthorized, and landing sites cannot be readily controlled; and (2) operational management measures are almost impossible to enforce and are beyond the finances of most management agencies. Thus, after many decades of intensive fisheries extraction, exacerbated by coastal degradation and globalization of markets, many shellfish are near the point of functional extinction (Carranza et al. 2009; Beck et al. 2011). In addition, the resilience of small-scale shellfisheries in Latin America is increasingly threatened by climatic and human drivers acting simultaneously at multiple temporal and spatial scales (Castrejón and Defeo 2015). There is still a poor understanding about how these social-ecological systems respond to different drivers and how these responses are shaped by past experiences, the features of the governing system and the system to be governed (Castrejón and Defeo 2015).
Sandy beach clams of the genus Mesodesma occur in the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, emerging as important SSFs (McLachlan et al. 1996; Defeo 2003). The yellow clam (Mesodesma mactroides) (Reeve 1854) inhabits the intertidal zone of dissipative sandy beaches from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil, 24°S) to San Matías Gulf (Argentina, 41°S) in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean (Fiori and Defeo 2006). In Uruguay, the yellow clam is collected by hand-gathering techniques mainly during the summer months at the seaside resorts and marketed either for bait or human consumption (Defeo 2003). This fast-growing species with a life span <4 yr is a suspension feeder with a high fecundity, producing about 5 million eggs per female. Gonadal development is controlled by temperature, with spawning taking place when the temperature is close to 20°C (McLachlan et al. 1996). During the last 20 years, mass mortality events decimated yellow clam populations along thousands of kilometers of sandy beaches in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, particularly during the warm seasons (Odebrecht et al. 1995; Fiori and Cazzaniga 1999; Ortega et al. 2012, 2016). These mass mortalities, where mass mortality is defined by a loss of 30 percent to 100 percent of the total population (EFSA 2010), have been attributed to a number of factors, including increasing sea surface temperatures (Ortega et al. 2012, 2016; Defeo et al. 2013: Figure 17.1a), harmful algal blooms (Odebrecht et al. 1995), environmental stress and parasitism (Fiori et al. 2004; Cremonte and Figueiras 2004; Cremonte et al. 2005), or a combination of these factors.
In this chapter we assessed the responses of ecological, social and institutional factors of the Uruguayan yellow clam fishery to mass mortalities. We applied the integrated assessment framework I-ADApT, which is intended to provide lessons on how the natural, social and governance systems respond to the challenges of global change in fishery and aquaculture systems (Bundy et al. 2016).
The study area, situated between La Coronilla and Barra del Chuy villages in the southeast of Uruguay (33°45’S, 53°27’W), consists of an exposed microtidal (tidal range: 0.5 m) oceanic sandy beach (hereafter referred as Barra del Chuy). This beach is wide (mean width ± SD: 69 ± 12 m) with a gentle slope (2.9 ± 0.5 percent), fine to very fine sands (0.20 ± 0.03 mm) and an extended surf zone of a longshore-bar-trough type that defines its dissipative character (Ortega et al. 2013) (Figure 17.1b). This sandy beach harbors the highest macrofaunal richness, abundance and biomass in the Uruguayan coast (Defeo et al. 1992; Lercari and Defeo 2015) and, in terms of biomass, the community is dominated by yellow clams. Barra del Chuy represents the only beach in the country where the species is exploited (Figure 17.1c).
Yellow clam catches in the study site were low before the 1980s, when operated as an open-access system, and increased up to 3.5 times between 1981 and 1985 (up to 250 tons), then decreased more than 50 percent in 1986. Afterwards, the government fisheries agency (the National Direction of Aquatic Resources, DINARA), coastal marine authorities, scientists and local fishers agreed on the implementation of a full fishery closure from April 1987 to November 1989 (Defeo 1996). This crisis was conceived as a window of opportunity to improve governance.
During this period, a great recovery of M. mactroides was observed: mean adult density was lowest in 1987, just before the fishery was closed (16 ± 1 ind·m–2), whereas it was more than 16 times higher two years later, at the end of the closed season (257 ± 30 ind·m–2). Fast growth in conjunction with low mortality during fishery closure led to a strong stock recovery: immediately after fishery closure, adults increased by more than 435 percent in less than one year (Figure 17.2), peaking in 1990 (Defeo and de Alava 1995).
Due to the rapid recovery of the stock, the fishery was reopened by DINARA from December 1989 onwards. The dialogue between DINARA’s scientists and the fisher community encouraged active voluntary fisher participation in enforcing regulations, thus generating a de facto co-management regime (Castilla and Defeo 2001). New operational management tools were implemented, including a global quota, a minimum catch volume per fisher, a maximum allowable number of fishers and spatial zoning that considered heterogeneity in resource abundance and fishing effort (Defeo 1989, 1996, 1998; Castilla and Defeo 2001). Thus, fishing grounds with lower productivity were used as exploitation units when demand for clams was low (e.g. austral autumn and winter), whereas the grounds with highest stock densities were used in spring and summer (Defeo 1989). The co-management phase of the fishery lasted until late 1994 and was very successful: catches varied between 50 and 60 tons per year, but catch per unit of effort (CPUE) was two times higher than in preclosure years (Defeo et al. 2016). In 1994 mass mortalities decimated populations of M. mactroides throughout its entire distribution range (Ortega et al. 2012), leading to a full fishery closure between 1994 and 2008 (Gianelli et al. 2015). Some 40 fishers and their families (200 persons) were directly affected by the issue.
The scale and magnitude of the mass mortalities determined that the system was not resilient to their impacts, even under a full fishery closure. The yellow clam stock was unable to recover from mass mortalities, not only at the local level but also throughout its entire geographic range (Defeo et al. 2013). This impact spread to the community level, affecting macrofauna diversity, abundance, structure and trophic flows.
The government implemented a fishery closure in 1994 immediately after the occurrence of mass mortalities. The closure of the fishery was the short-term reaction of DINARA in order to rebuild the depleted stock and was in place for several years until the stock showed signs of recovery (see later). Before 1994, DINARA was unaware of the occurrence and impacts of mass mortalities in Uruguay. Managers were not prepared to cope with the unusual changes caused by mass mortalities in the system to be governed, and no contingency plans were in place. Therefore, no options were provided to fishers to mitigate the economic impact on their livelihoods, causing loss of income and unemployment. Fishers immediately responded by diversifying their livelihoods in other sectors of the economy (e.g. construction, agriculture and selling firewood).
As the ecological system reacted very slowly and the targeted stock did not recover for some 14 years, the short-term response by fishers became a long-term one. During the 14-year fishery closure (transition phase), the main fishery leaders were in close contact with scientists of DINARA to find ways to consolidate the co-management system and to be prepared in case of stock recovery. They maintained their willingness to be continuously involved in the fishery process. Critical elements in the transition phase were the recognition of (1) stock depletion that prevented opening the fishery and (2) the successful co-management experience developed in the fishery during the pre-mass mortality years, which played a critical role in generating scientific knowledge to promote wise management and governance practices. Fishery leaders also played a key role in keeping the local community informed about the progress in stock rebuilding and in the reorganization of governance arrangements.
A high-level policy goal implemented at the national scale was very useful to set institutional and operational rules when the fishery was reopened. Indeed, since 2005, Uruguay began an institutional strategy to generate a long-term fisheries policy (Defeo 2015). Thus, DINARA drew up a Fisheries Management Program with clear long-term policy goals directed at transforming the utilization of Uruguay’s fisheries resources into sustainable production systems through the integration of ecosystem-related principles into national legal and planning frameworks. These policy goals included the implementation of an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) and co-management as the formal governance mode in SSFs (Defeo 2015; Gianelli et al. 2015). Co-management helped to redress previous open access and centralized (top-down) management failures in the yellow clam fishery (Defeo 1996, 1998; Castilla and Defeo 2001). The operational unit conceptualized for EAF/co-management development was called the Functional Unit of Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management (Unidad Funcional de Manejo Ecosistémico Pesquero) and emerged from participatory workshops between relevant stakeholders and DINARA (Defeo 2015). Co-management was formalized and strengthened through the creation of Zonal Fishery Councils (Gianelli et al. 2015). One of the pilot sites selected to implement EAF/co-management was the yellow clam fishery at Barra del Chuy, for two main reasons: (1) history, fishery traditions and social cohesion of the local community, which had a long-term relationship with the scientific staff of the government institution; and (2) availability of long-term historical data and the feasibility of gathering information to assess the performance of the EAF management plan.
The yellow clam fishery was reopened in 2009, once the stock showed signs of recovery, under an adaptive management approach that included EAF/co-management as the formal mechanism for stakeholder participation (Defeo 2015; Gianelli et al. 2015). The process included initial planning, implementation and feedback loops with stakeholders as the core of the EAF management plan, where operational objectives were set, together with the identification of performance indicators. The main goals of this management plan were to (Gianelli et al. 2015): (1) look towards sustainable exploitation by improving fishing practices following EAF principles; (2) empower the local fishing community through the institutionalization of co-management; and (3) improve the livelihood of fishers by securing employment and developing new market opportunities. In contrast to the de facto co-management system implemented during the pre-mass mortality period (1987–1994), co-management was institutionalized in the Law of Fisheries and Aquaculture as the formal governance mode to be implemented in SSFs in general and in the yellow clam fishery in particular. Therefore, the formal setting and implementation of a high-level policy goal provided strong incentives to fishers to empower themselves in the management process and, at the same time, diminished the uncertainty coming from the instability in the governance system that prevailed during the initial phases of fishery development.
Co-management was operationalized by two nested decision-making bodies: the Fishers’ Assembly and the Zonal Fishery Council (ZFC) of La Coronilla-Barra del Chuy. Through the Fishers’ Assembly, two legitimate representatives are elected to participate in the ZFC. The ZFC is composed of fishers’ representatives, fishery managers, local and departmental government officers and Coastal Marine Authority officers. Scientists from DINARA and academia, who played a critical role in the implementation of the EAF/co-management model, were allowed to participate in the meetings. Several operational and spatial management tools were also introduced, including (Gianelli et al. 2015) (1) a harvest season during summer; (2) allocation of a restricted number of fishing licenses, mainly to fishers with more experience in the fishery and to local residents; (3) a total allowable catch (TAC) per fishing season estimated through independent fishery surveys; (4) an individual and non-transferable quota, based on the equal sharing of the TAC among fishers; and (5) a minimum landing size limit (50 mm). Following the main criteria established during the pre-mortality period, the management of the fishery also considered a zoning scheme with the allocation of co-ownership authority to groups of fishers in beach management units with well-defined boundaries (Figure 17.3). Currently, this beach constitutes a multiple-use system, with closure to harvesting of selected portions of the beach, which are destined for tourism activities (McLachlan et al. 2013). Monitoring, control and surveillance of management measures are undertaken jointly by DINARA, the coastal marine authority (sub-prefecture), the Customs Office and the fishers in order to avoid illegal fishing and violations of established management tools.
Responses of the yellow clam social-ecological system to the EAF/co-management strategy implemented after mass mortalities were assessed using bio-socio-economic indicators for the periods 2007 to 2011 (pre-implementation and transition phases of EAF/co-management) and 2012 to 2015 (post-implementation) (Gianelli et al. 2015). Additional information gathered during the 1980s and 1990s were also used to depict long-term trajectories of yellow clam abundance. Indicators were compared through before–after procedures and response ratios (see Gianelli et al. 2015 for details). A preliminary assessment of the resilience of the fishery was also done using the Multi-dimensional Resilience Framework developed by Guillotreau et al. (2017),1 which includes ecological, social and governance resilience criteria. To this end, members of the Human Dimensions Working Group (HDWG) of Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) scored the entries in the I-ADApT template for the yellow clam fishery against these resilience criteria, which were then averaged in order to provide a shared view of the performance of the fishery in terms of its resilience.
Even though the stock recovered, it never reached abundance levels similar to those before the mass mortalities occurred. Nevertheless, a positive response in terms of abundance and biomass of the harvestable stock was observed over time. Abundance increased almost threefold (270 percent), and total harvestable biomass increased almost twofold (180 percent) in the EAF/co-management post-implementation phase. Abundance of the adult component of the population was orders of magnitude higher than those estimated during the fishing closure (Figure 17.2). This does not mean that EAF/co-management was the single explanatory factor for the observed long-term patterns; rather, it suggests that EAF/co-management implementation was a useful strategy that allowed for sustainable exploitation of the resource (Gianelli et al. 2015). Indeed, the long-term performance of the yellow clam SSF showed a fairly constant exploitation rate at low levels (< 25 percent), accompanied by relatively constant CPUE values over time (Figure 17.4a). The allocation of individual quotas as a right-based management tool allowed fishers to strategically allocate their fishing effort throughout the fishing season, slowing the pace of fishing in order to avoid the exhaustion of a low-level quota. In addition, individual yellow clam sizes were stabilized above the minimum landing size limit: landing samplings for the 2016 summer season showed a mean size of 57 mm (i.e. 7 mm larger than the minimum harvestable size). All these indicators, taken together, suggest that the enhanced production capacity of the fishery during the EAF/co-management implementation did not have a negative impact on the yellow clam stock.
Economic indicators showed that temporal variations in unit price and revenues per unit of effort were higher after EAF/co-management implementation (Figure 17.4a). These economic improvements in fishery performance are attributed to small enterprises developed by local fishers directed to reintroduce the yellow clam in the local market. Sponsored technically and economically by the government, fishers responded adaptively by diversifying their market in response to restaurants’ preferences for specific product attributes, such as freshness and quality. Therefore, the final destination of yellow clam products significantly changed over time, shifting from bait for sport fishing to human consumption in the gastronomic sector. At the beginning of EAF/co-management implementation (2009–2010) the destination of the product remained unknown or unreported. However, since the consolidation of the EAF/co-management phase, when a local processing plant was developed by a group of fishers, the proportion of product destined for human consumption markedly increased over time, reaching almost 95 percent of the total catch in 2014 (Figure 17.4b). The transition away from ‘bait destination’ towards ‘high-quality product’ was evidenced not only in the price paid to fishers, but also in the societal valuation of the product, providing local pride and social identity to the communities and creating fundamental change (Gianelli et al. 2015).
The resilience assessment of the yellow clam fishery to mass mortality events showed that the ecological resilience of the system, that is the H-resilience (ability of the system to absorb changes of state variables) and P-resilience (how fast the variables return towards their equilibrium following a perturbation) (Figure 17.5) was low. The species did not show a short-term capacity to absorb changes generated by the mass mortality event. Further, although some signs of recovery were observed almost a decade and a half (i.e. four generations) after mass mortalities, yellow clam abundance never reached pre-mortality levels. The system also showed relatively low social and economic static resilience (S-resilience in Figure 17.5), that is, a poor capacity to minimize welfare losses after the perturbation. Fishers responded by diversifying their livelihoods in other sectors of the economy, but it was very difficult to assure work continuity under adverse conditions. The same was true for the short-term responses of the governance system (SG-resilience in Figure 17.5), that is, government agencies did not respond to the problem at hand, no contingency plans were in place and no options were provided to fishers to mitigate the economic impact of this perturbation on their livelihoods. Therefore, there was a poor collective capacity to cope with disturbances with existing institutions. However, there was a relatively higher performance in terms of resilience in the longer term for governance initiatives (LG-resilience) and in the capacity to reconstruct, innovate and use the occurrence of mass mortality events as windows of opportunity, that is, dynamic socioeconomic resilience (D-resilience, Figure 17.5). Concerning LG-resilience, the Uruguayan government showed some ability to reform existing institutions and strengthened the adaptive capacity of the system through the implementation of high-level policy goals directed to develop and implement the EAF/co-management approach. In the case of dynamic socioeconomic resilience, the social-ecological system showed some capacity to strengthen collaboration among different stakeholders and to provide rules and action mechanisms based on previously successful co-management experiences.
Preliminary results of a questionnaire directed to evaluate stakeholders’ perceptions regarding the success and satisfaction of EAF/co-management implementation showed that fishers agreed that co-management was suitable to promote fishery recovery and to enhance fishing communities’ well-being. Since the implementation of the EAF/co-management approach, social cohesion, trust and organization of the community increased and the community was empowered as a part of the decision-making process. Thus, fishery governability has also improved. The active participation of fishers through meetings among themselves and with scientists and managers generated a sense of ownership and improved their well-being.
We assessed responses of natural, social and governance systems of the yellow clam SSF to mass mortalities in Uruguay. This kind of event has been increasingly reported in coastal bivalves and can have long-term ecological and economic effects. They been associated with drastic changes in environmental conditions (e.g. sea temperature, salinity, oxygen depletion), pollutants, harmful algal blooms, parasitism and infection by a range of pathogens, or an interplay among factors (Burdon et al. 2014).
The natural system denoted low ecological resilience, as depicted by the poor capacity and speed of recovery of yellow clam abundance over time, as observed in other bivalve stocks (McLachlan et al. 1996). A poor ecological response to long-term fishery closures has been increasingly observed in coastal bivalves, suggesting that strong perturbations and catastrophes pushed the system beyond critical thresholds or tipping points (Ortega et al. 2012, 2016). For example, the surf clam Mesodesma donacium in Peruvian coasts almost disappeared after the strong El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event of 1997 to 1998. The fishery was closed in 1999, and this management decision is still in place (Ortega et al. 2012). In the case of the yellow clam, regional sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) showed an increasing trend over time, particularly after an oceanographic shift that occurred with mass mortality events (Ortega et al. 2012). The position of the warm water front (20°C isotherm), a proxy of tropical waters, showed a long-term poleward shift rate of ca. 9 km·year–1 (Figure 17.1a) and increasing SSTA over time affected the abundance of the yellow clam (Ortega and Lercari 2013; Ortega et al. 2016). Therefore, increasing SSTA could have strong implications in the demography and population dynamics of coastal bivalves. Information on early warnings of tipping points is needed to help manage coastal shellfisheries that are increasingly threatened by long-lasting and large-scale stressors. In this context, I-ADApT (Bundy et al. 2016) offered a flexible framework to assess the responses of natural, social and governance systems of the yellow clam SSF to mass mortality events. The appraisal of these responses allowed the generation of knowledge-based solutions that can be applied to other comparable systems affected by mass mortalities.
In harvested shellfish, the effects of mass mortalities could be aggravated by weak governance and governability of these social-ecological systems (Caddy and Defeo 2003; Defeo and Castilla 2012). This study provides empirical evidence for the idea that EAF, coupled with co-management as a formal governance mode, could be helpful to address management tasks and to improve social-ecological conditions of SSFs. These plausible outcomes were reflected in the relatively high resilience in long-term trends in governance initiatives (LG-resilience) and in the capacity to use the occurrence of mass mortality events as windows of opportunity (D-resilience) to improve governance. Our findings provide additional support to the view that in Latin America, co-management is emerging as a promising governance mode to help solve the fishery crisis, through the active involvement of local communities (Basurto 2005; Defeo and Castilla 2005; Begossi et al. 2011). The long-term governance scheme, which formally allocates user rights and responsibilities to yellow clam fishers, are being taken by the national government to replicate this initiative to other SSFs. Although fine-tuning is necessary to build the resilience of this new regime, this transformation has improved the sustainability of the fishery. Our analysis of how this transformation unfolded provides insights into how the Uruguayan fishery system could be further developed and identifies general pathways for improved governance of SSFs around the world.
Despite the success of the EAF/co-management approach in the yellow clam SSF, social-ecological sustainability should not be taken for granted. This approach is not a panacea (Gutiérrez et al. 2011). In addition to climate change and governance instability, price shocks or massive importation of seafood, which substitutes domestic products, could strongly influence local communities and their shellfisheries (Castrejón and Defeo 2015; Defeo et al. 2016), as was recently documented for the Uruguayan yellow clam fishery (Gianelli et al. 2015). In this context, the governance system should provide enough flexibility to deal with complexity and uncertainty in the biophysical environment and in the globalization of international seafood markets that affects SSFs in a wide range of forms. Shifting towards adaptive governance systems could provide elements to respond to pressing and varying conditions in ways that maintain the resilience of SSFs. In this context, as we showed here, collaborative actions and adaptive responses at the community and institutional (i.e. co-governance bodies) levels could help prevent or mitigate the negative effects of external drivers on the social-ecological system, thus promoting more sustainable pathways.
We would like to express our gratitude to all the people who helped in sampling and laboratory analyses. We are grateful for the financial support provided by CONICYT (FCE 4034), CSIC-Grupos (G-633), PEDECIBA and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (grant CRN3070), which is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant GEO-1128040). Comments provided by an anonymous reviewer improved the final manuscript.
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