24 Months On: Progress Update from Galician Case Study

Researchers Pablo Pita Orduna, Ramón Muiño Boedo and Duarte Fernández Vidal,  discuss the progress of the Galician case study as they work towards expanding the TURF (Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries) Model in their area.

Latest News

“We have delivered  a report on the cartography of habitats to our fishing industry partner, the Federación Galega de Confrarías de Pescadores (FGCP). This report is the product of the Ecosystem Mapping phase of our case study and will be also the basis of a scientific paper. We hope to present the social procedures developed during this work a the upcoming MARE conference in Amsterdam, June 2013.

At the request of one of the fishermen’s organizations involved in our case study, we have also delivered a report on the effort distribution of the sea-urchin fishery, based on preliminary data from our Fisheries Monitoring work.

We have also welcomed two new postgraduate students into the project and they have been involved in our case study activities.”

Activity Updates

“We are currently working towards completing our cartography report on  species distribution, compiled using the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of fishermen, obtained in the Ecosystem Mapping phase of our case study.

The Fisheries Monitoring phase began in February, 2012 and is expected to last until June, 2013. Activities involved obtaining and processing the Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE information) from the data loggers and from the log-books. We are working with 503 daily log-books and 1166 fishing routes stored in the data loggers from 19 vessels.”

Issues & Resolutions

“Building the participation of the fishers in the Fisheries Monitoring phase has proven more difficult than hoped. Researchers deliver weekly reports to the FGCP about progress, regularly post news on the case study blog and delivered the first results of the Ecosystem Mapping, allowing the fishers to verify that their work has practical feedback for them. Yet fishers’ engagement is not as strong as expected.

Accordingly, moving forward, we have agreed a plan with the FGCP to meet researchers’ minimal requirements for data at least. The FGCP have also proposed using the official catch data of the vessels that delivered less log-books. The FGCP will ask for the permission of the Autonomous Government of Galicia on this issue.”

Other Activities

“Pablo Pita has recently engaged in a very successful GAP2 exchange trip with Jeremy Prince of Murdoch University in Australia (you can read the final report here).

We will also perform an evaluation of razor clam fisheries in Galicia with the cooperation of our case study partners, using SPR@size, the tool recently developed by Jeremy Prince. In this, another researcher group of the Vigo University in Galicia will be collaborating with us.

Duarte Fernández, a member of our team, has recently participated in a workshop in Chioggia (Italia) on the use of social science techniques in fisheries management. During the meeting we discussed the methodological tools we are using to work with fishermen, assessed the potential and limitations of each technique and the best ways to analyse the data.”

Interests & Needs

“We believe that we need to show our results in the decision levels of our fisheries. Getting involved in the South Western Waters RAC meetings would be very interesting to our case study.”

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