Critical Information For Fisheries Monitoring May Be Available In Social Media

Fisheries monitoring is essential to evaluate and manage fish populations. Effective monitoring is particularly challenging in low- and middle-income countries where fisheries often occur at large spatial scales and include multiple techniques. Recreational spearfishing, for instance, can be detrimental to fish populations and is often underrepresented in management strategies due to the lack of data. Because recreational fishers frequently share pictures of their catches online, social media can harbour valuable information. As a case study, freely available pictures in social media were used to assess the impacts of spearfishing on the endemic and endangered Brazilian parrotfish, Scarus trispinosus, that has experienced a sharp population decline in recent decades due to overfishing. It was found that S. trispinosus is widely captured by recreational spearfishing and at larger sizes when compared to artisanal fisheries, revealing complementary fishing pressures operating on different life stages of this species and a lack of compliance to current regulations. The number of users sharing these contents increased between 2007 and 2018, but declined thereafter until 2020. Identifying where spearfishing is more intense and the most targeted life-stages can inform prioritization of management strategies. Social media can be a rapid and low-cost tool to obtain nationwide fisheries information, especially for recreational fishing activities that have a flawed monitoring. The public disclosure of 'trophy fishes' can reveal lack of compliance to existing regulations and help fill critical information gaps on complementary fishing pressures. This approach may be applicable for many species and types of trophy fishing, providing valuable and useful information for management and conservation.