Accidents between artisanal fisheries and cetaceans on the Brazilian coast and Central Amazon: Proposals for integrated management

Human Ecology studies have shown the importance of the local knowledge that fishery communities have for providing information on the relationship between fishery and cetaceans. Fishers should be partners in the process of fishery management and they may help in the search for solutions. In this sense, the main objectives of this study are to qualitatively describe the accidents between cetaceans and fishing boats on the Brazilian coast and the Central Amazon region through the perception of the artisanal fishers, and to propose mitigatory measures to decrease their occurrences. From 2005 to 2010, 215 ethnographic interviews were conducted, focusing on this kind of interaction in fishers communities from the states of Amazonas, Bahia, Espيrito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Sمo Paulo, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. The interviewed fishers identified five species: Inia geoffrensis, Sotalia guianensis, Tursiops truncatus, Eubalaena australis and Megaptera novaeangliae. The justifications for the occurrence of the accidents described are related to the curiosity behavior of I. geoffrensis during the pursuit of their prey; coastal dolphins (S. guianensis and T. truncatus) tend to swim at high speeds and collide with the boats; and the baleen whales collide while they are trying to protect their calves and during night time, when there is low visibility. In order to decrease the number of these accidents, co-management is proposed, in which local members, researchers and the government would work together to encourage the collective feeling of ownership within the communities aiming to minimize the number of collisions.