Socio-Ecological Dynamics of Artisanal Lobster Fishery System in Providence and Santa Catalina Islands--Colombian Caribbean

Abstract

"The objective is to study the resilience of the artisanal fishery system in Spiny Lobster Panulirus argus as a social-ecological system. Three subsystems were analysed using as methodology dynamic modeling tools and semi structural interviews. The first subsystem is the lobster population which simulates life history, population and metapopulation dynamics, as well as density-dependence effect. The second subsystem is the fishery activity analysed from two perspectives: material fishery, based on historical data extraction; and virtual fishery, based on experimental economic approaches to fishermen behavior in a context of common pool resource (CPR), simulating the effect of institutions as communication, allowance and monitoring of external norms accomplishment.

"Both approaches simulate multiple stability domains in order to find variables or interactions between themselves capable to explain the resilience gains or losses between these equilibrium domains. This approach was complemented by a third analytical perspective: the study of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and the misperceptions as a cultural subsystem.

"The findings show dynamic failures directing the system to undesirable stability domains where fishery is unsustainable. These failures are related with the subsystems interactions and they are expressed in several aspects as losses of species reproductive potential, perception of not resource exhaustion, the poverty trap of fishing effort increases, high yield of exploitation, or norms breaking.

"Based on the results, we suggest vital strategies for the local resource management: i) the change of equality notion inside the fishermen population and external agents, ii) recovering the fisherman labour prestige in order to sustain the social memory, and finally iii) to go further in the harvest arrival monitoring, regarding capture sizes and gender looking for to estimate reproductive potential. This last variable has shown to be sensitive to changes in resilience gains and losses inside the biological subsystem. From a regional management view, fishery must be analyzed regarding the resource natural scale, as a Pan-Caribbean meta-population. It is therefore mandatory to make international cooperation efforts for sharing fisheries information, in addition to find ways to understand meta-population dynamics of lobster and the second order CPR."