Working with local communities for shark conservation

Show notes

We know that overfishing is one of the primary causes of global shark and ray declines. But, shark fisheries provide income and subsistence for many coastal communities. Inevitably, any regulation or conservation measure involving these fisheries must be culturally, socially and politically appropriate in order to be accepted, and to achieve this, we need to work with and understand the people they will affect. Equally, there are many gaps in our knowledge relating to sharks and rays, including in their distribution, status and how they are traded. SOSF project leaders and marine scientists Alifa Haque and Nadia Rubio specialise in integrating local and traditional knowledge with ecological data to gain a bigger picture of what is happening to endangered species of sharks and rays and have gained a solid understanding of what limits the capacity and willingness of fishers to engage in conservation initiatives and policies. Host Dr Isla Hodgson sat down with them to discuss their work with fishers in the field and how they are slowly building shark conservation programmes that work for the community.

We start by learning about the places in which Alifa and Nadia work [07.08]. Alifa tells us all about Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal, and Nadia, the Caribbean waters of Holbox, Mexico – two hugely biodiverse areas supporting many species of sharks and rays, but also communities who depend on the coastal resources. Nadia has spent a lot of time in Holbox, studying how coastal exploitation has changed through time, using a combination of interviews, surveys, and historical and archaeological data [11.07]. Her work also involves a lot of community education to share knowledge about the local biodiversity and traditional culture relating to natural resource use. Alifa explains that she was driven to speak with local fishers after discovering a paucity of data relating to shark and ray species in the Bay of Bengal [13.00]. She remembers a fisherman coming to show her a sawfish rostrum, which was the first evidence she’d seen that the species still existed in the region. She then started a project around a “fishers involved network”, where fishers could use their phones to notify her if they located a sawfish. Since then, she has worked carefully to build relationships and trust, figuring out culturally and socially acceptable conservation actions, which led to the first live release of a sawfish by fishermen in the area. As a highly valuable species, this was a very important first step. Nadia’s introduction to fishermen came while conducting her earlier research in grey whale eco-tourism, where she describes meeting fishers in the field and being “enchanted” by their stories and culture [18.28]. When deciding on a PhD subject, she and her supervisor wanted to explore the past to get an idea of the present, and she has since continued to explore human relationships with nature through time. She describes the islands she works on as the “perfect laboratory” for this, with a rich and varied history in coastal exploitation. She has now been able to understand, from the fisher’s local knowledge, how fisheries have changed and how shark and ray diversity has shifted. She also explains that fisheries are now being displaced by tourism, which is altering the social environment.

But there can be a lot of mistrust towards scientists from fishers and other local communities, which can make gathering data difficult. Isla was interested to know how Nadia and Alifa approached their fieldwork. Nadia explains that she takes time before conducting interviews or surveys to get to know the cultures and traditions of the community, and help them to trust her [22.13]. In Holbox, she discovered that the fishers were interested in the photographs she was taking of them and that this was a potential way to break down some barriers [35.20]. For Alifa, it’s about accepting that some opinions and norms will be different, or even conflicting, to your own, but encouraging mutual respect and allowing time for trust to develop [27.50]. Both Alifa and Nadia stress the importance of transparency, honesty and communication – essentially, explaining exactly what your research is about, how their data will be used, the potential outcomes, and most importantly, giving feedback after the project has ended [38.00]. And, you can never overestimate the power of tea!

Nadia and Alifa have spent a lot of time and effort gaining the trust and respect of the communities they work with, and because of that have been able to gain some hugely valuable insights into sharks, rays, and potential ways forward for their conservation. Through thousands of interviews, surveys and other data, Nadia has been able to generate a more complete picture of sharks through time in the waters of the Mexican Caribbean, especially related to larger species [42.40]. As she explains, catches of smaller shark species have increased, but the fishermen recognise that larger species have been over-exploited and want something to be done about it. Here, she also highlights the importance of an interdisciplinary team in building a robust picture of change through time – she has worked with archaeologists, ecologists and sociologists to achieve this. Alifa has also conducted over 3, 000 interviews and 30 workshops with fishers, which has allowed her to gain data on shark and ray diversity and habitat, which she has compared with ecological models to test for accuracy. Overall, the outcomes were almost identical – showing that Alifa’s methods can provide a much cheaper way to get the same data [46.00]. She has also found a host of social, economic, political and cultural barriers that limit the capacity and willingness of fishers to engage in conservation efforts [48.10]. Any conservation measure or policy will need to offset these in order to be accepted by the community. Nadia says that her work tells a different but, in many ways, similar story [53.00]. The elder fishing community has largely stopped fishing and turned to eco-tourism and is more open to diversifying its income. However, the younger generation is much more against this change – meaning that conservation programmes and policies will need to take generational differences into account.

We end our conversation by discussing a popular buzzword in conservation: community empowerment. Both Nadia and Alifa question the use of this word. Alifa explains we must be careful when using this term, as it implies an existing power dynamic that isn’t always favourable to the community [56.40]. For her, true empowerment is when the community, or representatives of the community, have an equal seat at the decision-making table and can speak for themselves. Nadia believes that true empowerment will come from empathy – which is something she feels we are losing on a global scale [60.00]. This includes acknowledging someone else’s different way of life, and be willing to integrate and understand their needs.

About our guests

Dr Nadia Rubio

Nadia obtained her doctoral degree in Marine Biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. For the past 15 years, Nadia has been involved in numerous marine ecology research programs in the Gulf of California, the Mexican Caribbean, off the California Coast, and the South Pacific. She has worked on a wide scope of projects related to the study of coastal ecosystem services at different temporal and spatial scales, the analysis of social-ecological systems involved in small-scale fisheries of Northwest Mexico. She has studied diverse aspects of the ecology of whales, sea turtles, and coral reefs. Nadia’s present research focuses on studying how coastal exploitation has evolved from ancient cultures to the present. 

Nadia is an SOSF project leader, working on integrating Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) about sharks and other marine fauna with spatial data to understand Mexico’s marine biodiversity better. She is also the director and founder of Mar Sustentable Ciencia y Conservación, A.C., a non-profit organisation that works to conserve marine life in Mexico’s Caribbean waters.

Twitter: @MarSustenable

Instagram: @nadsocean, @marsustenable1

TikTok:  @marsustenable1

Alifa Haque

Alifa works in the coastal region of Bangladesh, especially in the south-eastern coastal areas where the majority of peoples’ lives are fishery-dependent. Hence, the fishing pressure is unimaginable. She has extended her work in the southwestern areas recently to include the conservation of sawfish.

In her DPhil project, she will be broadly looking at how the biological sustainability of species can be used to provide insights for sustainable fisheries and by-catch mitigation with a focus on sharks and rays in Bangladesh. Her goal is to initiate evidence-based marine conservation in Bangladesh, which is inclusive of the primary resource users, the fishers.

Alifa is an SOSF project leader working on sawfishes and rhino rays in Bangladesh. You can find out more about her work here.

Instagram: @haque.alifa

Twitter: @alifa_haque