Protecting sharks and coastal livelihoods
SHOW NOTES
Before taking a trip to Indonesia, we first explore Hollie’s career journey [07.13]. Hollie grew up in landlocked Birmingham, in the UK, and recalls being interested in “all wildlife”. But her love for sharks didn’t come until much later. Throughout her undergraduate degree and previous experiences, Hollie had worked on a variety of projects specialising in the illegal wildlife trade and something called an Impact Assessment, a tool which in a very basic sense attempts to figure out if conservation measures have been successful. For her Masters thesis, Hollie began work on a project that combined these interests: a project with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) looking at the impact of a new law to protect manta rays in Indonesia. This was her ‘gateway’ into the world of sharks and rays, but also her ticket to Indonesia. Following her masters, Hollie became technical advisor for the WCS in Indonesia and several years later completed her PhD studying the socio-economic drivers of shark fishing and barriers to pro-conservation behaviour.
Hollie’s work demonstrates how complex it can be to find adequate solutions to the problem of overfishing [19.34]. There are many different types and scales of fishing – from the smaller-scale and more artisanal fisheries that Hollie works with, to industrial vessels with large crews and mechanised gears. And even within these scales, there are nuances depending on where you are and what species is being caught. In Indonesia, methods of fishing vary widely and where the catch is sold depends on the species. Some sharks and rays will be kept for local or domestic consumption, but other, more valuable species may be sold to the international market, and therefore become part of a different supply chain. This makes it difficult to truly define ‘small-scale’ vs ‘industrial’ fisheries – especially as different countries will have different definitions of what this means – but Hollie thinks of fisheries as a spectrum. On one end, there are operations that are just one man with a small boat, fishing for his family. On the other, large fleets that are out at sea for weeks or months on end, whose profits usually feed into huge multi-national corporations. And in the middle are many variations of the two.
Another complexity that Hollie has found in Indonesia is the term ‘by-catch’ [25.47]. Many of the fisheries Hollie has worked with catch multiple species and so operate multiple gears. Depending on the gear used and where, this can result in the capture of non-target species – species other than the ones that the fishers are aiming to catch. This is known as ‘by-catch’, and it is often how endangered sharks and rays end up being caught. One of the questions Hollie had was how different species caught as by-catch are viewed by the fishers, and she found some interesting results. Some species were viewed as ‘genuine by-catch’, meaning that for whatever reason, the fishers really didn’t want to catch them. These species often didn’t hold much market value (a whale shark, for example, is a protected species and highly valued for tourism in Indonesia). They also caused problems for the fishers: taking up space in the net, or even damaging equipment. Because of the potential economic cost of catching these species and their lack of value, fishers would accept technical solutions to help prevent it happening again, such as a different type of net. Hollie says this is a “win-win” scenario, where fishers, conservationists and the sharks benefit. But, there are other species that are valuable. Hollie calls these “valuable secondary catches” or “cheeky bonus catches”. While they are not what the fisher is directly targeting, these species can still be sold to make a profit or provide food for the fisher’s family. Here, sustainable solutions are a little more difficult to determine.
A first step towards finding answers is by understanding the drivers of shark fishing, something that Hollie has spent a lot of time researching in the region [29.14]. As Hollie says: “…my research really was initially focused on actually trying to really understand, what are these underlying social and economic issues in order to find solutions…my take is that if you don’t understand what drives people, and what drives their decisions and behaviours, then you can’t come up with kind of meaningful solutions that are going to work in the long term.” One of the biggest issues she found – especially in small-scale, mixed species, tropical fisheries – was that fishers were driven by the need to cover the daily costs and needs of their families. In a cash economy, every fish matters. So, conservation measures that ask the fishers to stop what they’re doing, or to not catch certain species, will not work unless the fisher is compensated for that loss. This is where social justice interacts with conservation. As Hollie explains, it is important that conservation also considers the costs on people, especially in low income countries where restrictions could mean not being able to feed your family, or send your children to school.
However, while economic barriers were the most common, there was also a host of other social and cultural barriers to fishers engaging with conservation measures [34.11]. Hollie has come across some fishers who feel they gain social status when catching a fish – especially a large, challenging predator like a shark. In other communities, fishing has religious connotations; the fish are a gift from God, and that refusing that gift would anger or insult God. “You have this sort of complex interplay between different economic, social and cultural values.” Says Holly. “…we need to try and kind of disentangle and address [these values] if conservation is going to be effective.”
Hollie’s next step was to try and figure out how to address some of these barriers, and create long-lasting, sustainable solutions to protect both sharks and coastal livelihoods [35.46]. One of the outcomes of Hollie’s PhD was an agreement, created together with the fishers, to reduce the catches of critically endangered hammerhead sharks and wedgefish – two highly valuable species – as long as the fishers were fairly compensated. An important part of Hollie’s research was finding out from the fishers what “fair” meant; finding out how much those species would have been sold for, and what level of compensation the fishers would find acceptable. Fishers were also provided with a waterproof camera and would need to provide evidence of the shark or wedgefish alive and happily swimming away in order to get payment.
Like any conservation project, a potential problem was long-term funding to support the compensation scheme – but Hollie had an idea, which became the focus of her Save Our Seas Foundation funded project ‘Solutions for Shark Fisheries in a Surfer’s Paradise’. Indonesia also boasts a thriving marine tourism industry. Hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to the region every year to dive with marine life, including the diversity of sharks and rays, generating lots of money for the economy. This is an industry that has a vested interest in seeing healthy populations of sharks and rays, and Hollie saw an opportunity to engage them in solutions to overfishing via funding initiatives for community based shark conservation. She set about trying to understand whether tourists would be willing to put money into a centralised ‘pot’ that could then be used to fund the compensation release scheme, or other similar activities.
And as for the compensation scheme itself, Hollie has also been investigating it’s effectiveness in the field via randomised control trials [45.50]. Essentially, the fishers are split into two groups – a control group, who receive no payment, and a treatment group, who receive the compensation. To ensure all fishers get to participate, the groups switch over after three months. Hollie found that the effectiveness of the scheme was variable. Collectively, they’ve had over 1,000 hammerhead sharks and wedgefish successfully released – an amazing achievement! But, because of the randomised control trial, Hollie and her team were also able to discover that certain vessels had ‘special knowledge’ of places where they could catch more individuals, and were catching sharks with the purpose of releasing them and getting compensation. Hollie’s team are now able to put measures in place to protect against this, which she says is all part of the learning process. They’ve also worked very closely with the local government, and have worked hard to embed the project in the wider social and cultural context, attending important cultural events and promoting the release scheme on social media.
And this work has paid off, especially in terms of how the communities view the project [50.17]. When asked for their perceptions of the project, the overall response was positive – even from fishers who had not participated. Fishers valued the way they had been consulted and involved in the process, and stated that they did not feel as though their livelihoods were being affected by the project. Building trust and good relationships is a hard thing to do, but incredibly valuable when it comes to ensuring the longevity and effectiveness of a conservation project.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
DR HOLLIE BOOTH
Hollie is an interdisciplinary researcher with an interest in applying social and economic research methods to solve complex conservation challenges in collaboration with local stakeholders, which aim to deliver biodiversity & well-being outcomes in parallel.
She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford in 2021 on ‘Interdisciplinary approaches to shark and ray conservation’, during which she focused on understanding the socio-economic drivers of shark fishing and designing effective and equitable interventions in small-scale fisheries in Indonesia. She received the Society for Conservation Biology Early Career Researcher award (2022) and the Zoological Society of London Marsh Award for Marine & Freshwater Conservation (2023) for my work.
Hollie’s current research project at Oxford University’s Department of Biology builds on her PhD, and focuses on designing, implementing, and evaluating incentive-based approaches for marine biodiversity and human well-being outcomes in small-scale fisheries in collaboration with local NGOs and students. In parallel, she works as a Strategic Director for The Biodiversity Consultancy, leading a team of consultants to advise multi-national corporations on how to mitigate the negative impacts of their value chains on nature and invest in nature restoration and recovery.
Prior to her PhD, Hollie spent over 6 years working for international conservation NGOs in East Africa and SE Asia, including the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). I also completed an MSc in Conservation Science at Imperial College London and a BA in Natural Sciences and Management Studies at the University of Cambridge.
She is a first-generation PhD from a failed state school, and is passionate about equity and diversity in science. In particular, Hollie is interested in promoting participation of women, local people, minority groups, and people from low-income backgrounds in conservation and academia.
You can follow Hollie on social media on Instagram here and here, and on Twitter.
You can also read more about her work on the SOSF website, her PhD page, and her current project website.
