Increasing social risk and markets demand lead to a more selective fishing across the Pantanal wetland

Fishing connects people, aquatic systems, places, and fish consumer markets all around the world. Our understanding of the magnitude and intensity of these interactions are comparatively scarce for some regions, and to date have mostly yielded insights to understand socioecological linkages within marine fisheries. Here, we investigated how socio-demographic and economic factors are associated with fishing selectivity in the Brazilian Pantanal wetland using data from the continental commercial fishing sector from 18 fisher colonies. Our results show that increasing unemployment can lead to a more specialized or selective fishery. In addition, the watersheds where more selective fishing is practiced were those whose colonies are closer to the state capitals that make up the Upper Paraguay River Basin. The general results support that Pantanal wetland fishers do not follow the global pattern of fisheries in regions with low development, which tends to behave more as generalists than specialists. On the other hand, we provide evidence that specialized fishing selectivity is associated with external market demand in a socioeconomic coupling. We emphasize the importance of socioeconomic policies to reduce social vulnerability of fishers, and of management strategies to maintain fish stocks in wetlands.