690
fish stocks in Brazil. There is an urgent need to gather accurate landing information
in to be crossed with biological and ecological knowledge in order to choose consistent fishery management priorities for each estuarine ecosystem. First, the
approach needs to be used in estuaries as singular systems, but with time, there will
be the need of electing model systems to be fully monitored and from which decisions can be extrapolated to other similar settings. Fish stocks are exploited at different levels and it depends mainly/roughly on the latitude of the estuarine complex.
Characteristics of the river basin, fauna, social uses and other descriptors are
common to relatively wide bands along the Western Atlantic coast. Therefore, applicable measures should be possible to be reproduced from one estuary to the other
with minimum data sampling and re-evaluation of the fisheries management model.
Co-management and daily reports on production can help to design stock assessment models, understand variations in biomass over time, detect problems of uncontrolled fishing effort, point periods of seasonal habits for each fishery resource, and,
most importantly, guarantee that enough juveniles of each living resource can be
recruited to adult stocks accordingly.
The first Marine Protected Area (MPA) in a Brazilian estuary was created only
recently, in the early 1980s (Diegues 2008). Despite the number and variety of
coastal ecosystems, including estuaries, the number of officially and effectively protected areas is still insufficient, and should not comply with the assumed commitment of protecting at least 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Ideally,
conservation measures should also guarantee the conservation of much wider
coastal areas than MPAs. Recently, federal agencies are working on fishing restrictions and monitoring strategies, closed periods and areas, and quota for the catches
aiming at implementation at marine protected areas only. If it works, more consistent management practices will be devised in order to protect local and regional
resources from all human and particularly fishery impacts, by improving the performance of estuarine ecological services.
Whereas estuaries have highly dynamic and heterogeneous habitats, working in
favor of the estuarine ecocline (environmental gradients) is also important to the
continued production of socio-economically relevant estuarine-dependent fish
resources (Barletta et al. 2005, 2008; Barletta and Costa 2009; Ferreira et al. 2016).
For each fishery resource, ontogenetic stages use different strategies and habitats to
complete their life cycles according to the spatio-temporal variability of abiotic
compartments across the estuarine gradient. Therefore, reliable ecological and fish
landing data are fundamental in managerial actions because ecologically planned
data acquisition can consistently explain how environmental gradients influence the
distributional patterns of communities due to their biological demands on trophic
webs, reproductive timing and use of temporary nursery habitats, including their
seasonal peaks of abundance along the river-estuary-coastal area-sea continuum.
The implementation of measures aiming at mitigating impacts to fish stocks
needs to be achieved in accordance with social subjects and organizations. In this
sense, it is extremely important, continuity and expansion of the monitoring network of fisheries production, with coverage of relevant landings of estuarine, coastal
and marine productions by training and using the valuable human resources within
M. Barletta et al.
fish stocks in Brazil. There is an urgent need to gather accurate landing information
in to be crossed with biological and ecological knowledge in order to choose consistent fishery management priorities for each estuarine ecosystem. First, the
approach needs to be used in estuaries as singular systems, but with time, there will
be the need of electing model systems to be fully monitored and from which decisions can be extrapolated to other similar settings. Fish stocks are exploited at different levels and it depends mainly/roughly on the latitude of the estuarine complex.
Characteristics of the river basin, fauna, social uses and other descriptors are
common to relatively wide bands along the Western Atlantic coast. Therefore, applicable measures should be possible to be reproduced from one estuary to the other
with minimum data sampling and re-evaluation of the fisheries management model.
Co-management and daily reports on production can help to design stock assessment models, understand variations in biomass over time, detect problems of uncontrolled fishing effort, point periods of seasonal habits for each fishery resource, and,
most importantly, guarantee that enough juveniles of each living resource can be
recruited to adult stocks accordingly.
The first Marine Protected Area (MPA) in a Brazilian estuary was created only
recently, in the early 1980s (Diegues 2008). Despite the number and variety of
coastal ecosystems, including estuaries, the number of officially and effectively protected areas is still insufficient, and should not comply with the assumed commitment of protecting at least 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Ideally,
conservation measures should also guarantee the conservation of much wider
coastal areas than MPAs. Recently, federal agencies are working on fishing restrictions and monitoring strategies, closed periods and areas, and quota for the catches
aiming at implementation at marine protected areas only. If it works, more consistent management practices will be devised in order to protect local and regional
resources from all human and particularly fishery impacts, by improving the performance of estuarine ecological services.
Whereas estuaries have highly dynamic and heterogeneous habitats, working in
favor of the estuarine ecocline (environmental gradients) is also important to the
continued production of socio-economically relevant estuarine-dependent fish
resources (Barletta et al. 2005, 2008; Barletta and Costa 2009; Ferreira et al. 2016).
For each fishery resource, ontogenetic stages use different strategies and habitats to
complete their life cycles according to the spatio-temporal variability of abiotic
compartments across the estuarine gradient. Therefore, reliable ecological and fish
landing data are fundamental in managerial actions because ecologically planned
data acquisition can consistently explain how environmental gradients influence the
distributional patterns of communities due to their biological demands on trophic
webs, reproductive timing and use of temporary nursery habitats, including their
seasonal peaks of abundance along the river-estuary-coastal area-sea continuum.
The implementation of measures aiming at mitigating impacts to fish stocks
needs to be achieved in accordance with social subjects and organizations. In this
sense, it is extremely important, continuity and expansion of the monitoring network of fisheries production, with coverage of relevant landings of estuarine, coastal
and marine productions by training and using the valuable human resources within
M. Barletta et al.