On Friday 2nd of July, the LICCI Fisheries Group launched its first scientific seminar, taking the opportunity to highlight the great work of the fisheries group members. Here are the main insights of the event.
The Fisheries Group builds on a network of partners and collaborators in the LICCI research network who are collecting local level data of fishery changes and resulting adaptations of fishing communities around the world. To foster research collaboration, the group initiated in July a series of monthly scientific seminars focusing on the work carried out by the different members. For the first session, we gave the floor to three high-level scientists, Dr André Carlo Colonese from the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB), Diego Salgueiro and Iratxe Rubio from the Future Oceans Lab (Centro de Investigación Mariña,Universidad de Vigo), to discuss the multifaceted aspects of fisheries in face of global changes.
Can cultural heritage contribute to solve food security-related issues in coastal Brazil? This is the question that André Colonese (PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology, Università di Siena, Italy) and his team sought to address as part of a collaborative research project supported by the British Academy Newton Mobility Grants (2015). They investigate the role of indigenous fish traps locally called “camboas” and “curraos” in the coastal area of Maranhão, Brazil. In particular, they found that traditional camboas represent a critical source of food for low-income families, thus contributing significantly to the resilience of these coastal communities. Made with local minerals such as plinthite, these traps are mostly used by migrant families to capture fish in intertidal areas. In case of shocks, they might provide an extra-income to families and act as a safety net. However, camboas users often do not identify themselves as indigenous, nor do they use camboas to maintain or reclaim a cultural identity. Overall, the camboas study exemplifies the complex integration of modern techniques and indigenous knowledge in Brazilian coastal small-scale fisheries.
Back to Northern latitudes, PhD students from the Future Oceans Lab presented two case studies on climate adaptation in Atlantic Fisheries in Spain. Diego Salgueiro explored the questions of access, gender inequities and adaptive capacities in the context of small-scale fisheries in Galicia. This research demonstrates that livelihood diversification is a key source of adaptation in these coastal communities. Iratxe Rubio tackled the question of adaptation in industrial fisheries through a focus on the Basque international tuna fishery. These two perspectives taken together provide rich insights on the Northern Spanish socio-ecological systems and meaningful potential pathways for adaptation to climate change impacts.
The first LICCI fisheries seminar has been rich in information and knowledge-sharing, while facilitating research connections within the group. Building on this success, we look forward to the next seminar, which will take place in the end of September and focus on the aquatic LICCIs and LACCIs collected by local partners. Stay tuned!