Local ecological knowledge reveals valuable information about the impact of global changes on coastal fisheries resources
Local ecological knowledge, artisanal fishing, climate change, perception, APA Costa dos Corais
Global changes have caused several alterations in coastal systems through pollution, overexploitation of species, increase in global temperature in the atmosphere and oceans, in addition to extreme temperature/precipitation events in various regions of the planet, causing profound impacts on socioecological systems, especially in human fishing communities that depend heavily on marine resources. In this research, we evaluated the impact of changes in two coastal fishing communities in Northeast Brazil, located in the Costa dos Corais Environmental Protection Area (APACC), the largest coastal marine protected area in the country. Based on structured and semi-structured interviews, we investigated the perception of fishermen and women regarding the changes that have occurred in fishing activity. We tested the following hypotheses: i) there is a perception of population decline in large species over time; ii) impacts are greater for reef species; iii) species with migratory habits are more impacted; iv) overfishing is a more important factor to explain the population reduction of the species. The results indicate that there is a perception of impacts related to pollution, overfishing and climate change, which reveals the need to organize management measures to mitigate these impacts in the context of global changes.