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Interdisciplinary Approaches to Shark & Ray Conservation A SUMMARY OF DPHIL RESEARCH FINDINGS, BY HOLLIE BOOTH

Intro

I'm Hollie, I'm an interdisciplinary researcher with over a decade of experience in designing, implementing and studying complex conservation projects in challenging contexts. I recently completed my DPhil at the University of Oxford (in the ICCS research group, supervised by Prof EJ Milner-Gulland), which focused on effective and socially-just shark conservation.

This website aims to summarise and disseminate key findings and lessons learned, in the hope they might be useful for NGOs, decision-makers and researchers.

TAKE HOME MESSAGES

Overarching themes & recommendations

1. ACKNOWLEDGING & MANAGING TRADE-OFFS is necessary for more effective and socially just shark conservation. There are trade-offs between conservation objectives and well-being, between different conservation objectives (e.g., cross-taxa conflicts), and between different components of well-being, as well as the distribution of costs and benefits across space and time. These trade-offs and related socio-economic complexities need to be integrated into decision-making frameworks. Most importantly, we cannot expect the poorest people in society to bare the majority of the costs of shark conservation.

2. EMBRACING SOCIAL & BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES is necessary to understand threats & drivers, design responses, and assess their impacts. A range of micro- and macro-level drivers influence shark fishing mortality, including: basic needs for food and livelihoods, socio-cultural values, incidental catches, and profit motivations. Moreover, these drivers interact and vary across fisheries. Better integration of human dimensions into shark conservation science can generate context-specific grounded evidence for research to inform action.

3. MOVING BEYOND THE FIN TRADE & BLANKET BANS is necessary to transform the political economy of shark fishing. A combination of micro/behavioural & macro/structural interventions are required, as part of a systems-based approach to drive meaningful change across the entire fishing industry. For example, well designed incentive-based approaches could change fisher behaviour, while market-based approaches such as bycatch levies and tourism levies could drive structural change and generate billions of dollars in ocean finance. These behavioural and structural interventions could be drawn together as part of an integrated strategy.

A schematic of how bycatch levies, tourism levies and marine conservation payments could support an integrated strategy for recovery of marine biodiversity

Overall, this research highlights the importance of a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to shark conservation, and illustrates some feasible strategies and next steps for achieving better outcomes for sharks and people. More details on methods and approaches can be found below.

Next steps for science and practice

  • Advocating for bold commitments by governments and institutions - no net loss or nature positive in the marine realm.
  • Designing and testing behavioural and structural interventions - including incentive and market-based approaches, and assessing their cost-effectiveness.
  • Assessing marine biodiversity impacts and outcomes - in the seafood industry and within coastal communities.
  • Scaling low-cost third-party impact monitoring technologies - to improve accountability in the marine realm.
A research framework for shark conservation science, adapted from Williams et al. (2020) to include specific examples for sharks, and adding in adaptive management and examples of where social and behavioural research methods are needed in the research process. The shading of the boxes conceptually represents the amount of research already conducted in that domain, with darker shading representing relatively more research effort, and lighter shading representing relatively little research effort.
A simplified theory of change for emerging marine biodiversity markets, as part of an integrated strategy for recovery of marine biodiversity, with potential roles and intervention points for NGOs and civil society (grey boxes) and research opportunities (yellow boxes)

Chapter summaries

BACKGROUND: Why is this research important?

Sharks, rays and their other cartilaginous relatives are amongst the world's most threatened species, primarily due to overfishing. This is worrying because sharks can play important roles in maintaining functional and productive marine ecosystems, and the benefits that people obtain from the ocean.

Examples of ecosystem services, values, and constituents of well-being from sharks. A: shark meat skewers being prepared for sale (provisioning), B: a reef shark interacting with reef fish on a coral reef (maintaining), C: a scuba-diver with a manta ray (cultural)

Sustaining healthy shark populations - and achieving global environmental and sustainability objectives (e.g UN SDGs, CITES, CBD post-2020 strategy) - means tackling overfishing. However, this can create tricky trade-offs between marine biodiversity conservation and the socio-economic value of fisheries. These trade-offs are particularly acute in small-scale fisheries in the Global South, where people can be highly dependent on marine resources, including endangered marine megafauna, for their food and income.

Aims & Questions

My research aimed to contribute to more effective design of shark & ray conservation interventions, which can simultaneously deliver conservation outcomes for sharks (with a focus on threatened species) and well-being outcomes for people (with a focus on small-scale fisheries).

How can we mitigate overfishing of sharks and rays, whilst maintaining the livelihoods and well-being of some of the world's most vulnerable coastal communities?

I also aimed to identify interventions targeting macro-level (e.g. policy, markets) and micro-level (e.g. local social and economic values) drivers of shark fishing, which could simultaneously deliver structural change and behavioural change. At the micro-level I focused on three small-scale fisheries in Indonesia:

Study sites, A. a map of Indonesia showing the location of the study sites; B-D examples of the vessels and catches in each site (B. Lhok Rigaih, C. Tanjung Luar, D. Lamakera).

KEY MESSAGE 1: Shark conservation efforts must consider socio-economic issues in order to be effective and socially just.

KEY MESSAGE 2: A net outcomes approach, implemented via the mitigation hierarchy, can integrate socio-economic issues into management planning, and identify 'least cost' actions towards united, ambitious goals for population recovery.

KEY MESSAGE 3: Addressing illegal and unsustainable fishing behaviour requires integrated and multi-faceted approaches, including regulatory frameworks and alternatives/incentives which can work synergistically.

“Regulation will not always, and not alone, effectively address conservation problems”

KEY MESSAGE 4: Understanding fishers' underlying beliefs regarding unsustainable practices and pro-conservation behaviours can help to identify drivers and constraints as targets for conservation interventions.

KEY MESSAGE 5: When shark fishing is important for economic welfare, and entire fishery closures or buy-outs are unfeasible, managing small-scale shark fisheries for multiple outcomes may require hard choices. For example, prioritising slow-growing Critically Endangered taxa for protection, while faster-growing taxa can continue to provide benefits for coastal communities.

KEY MESSAGE 6: Limit-based measures, such as catch and trade limits for endangered and CITES-listed species, can have significant economic opportunity costs for small-scale low-income fishers. Innovative policy instruments are required to effectively reduce threats to endangered species, whilst doing no harm to vulnerable coastal communities.

Methods from econometrics can help conservation scientists to better understand wildlife markets, and make management decisions which create better outcomes for wildlife and people.

KEY MESSAGE 7: Performance-based or compensatory payments (i.e. PES) in small-scale fisheries could offer a cost-effective and socially-just approach for delivering conservation outcomes for sharks while mitigating opportunity costs. However, grounded, participatory research is essential for informing locally-appropriate design.

KEY MESSAGE 8: The 'beneficiary-pays principle' could be applied to the shark tourism industry (e.g. via tourism levies) as a feasible and scalable conservation financing mechanism, which can fund community-based conservation (e.g. PES) and balance inequities in terms of who bears the costs and benefits of conservation.

KEY MESSAGE 9: Bycatch levies - in which commercial seafood companies pay a fee per unit of their bycatch - could incentivise bycatch prevention and raise revenue for compensatory conservation. This offers a 'polluter-pays' financing mechanism, which can deliver net conservation outcomes and distributive justice.

For updates and further information you can find me on Twitter or email hollie.booth[at]zoo.ox.ac.uk

Collaborators & Funders

Acknowledgements

This research and the briefings summarised herein were made possible with support and collaboration from many people and institutions. In particular, Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland, Dr Luky Adrianto, Professor Dale Squires, Professor Susana Mourato, M Said Ramdlan, Kusuma Banda Naira, Muhsin, Muhammad Ichsan, DKP Aceh Jaya (especially Teuku Ridwan and Yulizar), the Panglima Laot of Aceh Jaya (Pak Jafar ID), research assistants (Yesha, Karto, Rizky, Laila, Ichsan) and fishers and tourism operators in Lombok and Aceh.

With thanks to funders: the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN), the Oxford-NaturalMotion Graduate Scholarship, Save Our Seas Foundation, the Society for Conservation Biology and the Pew Trusts.

Credits:

Created with an image by Aaron - "Grey reef shark swimming peacefully over a coral reef"