CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The artisanal fishery of northern Atlantic Patagonia consists of three main activities: diving for bivalves, coastal shellfish gathering and beach-seining. Coastal gatherers handpick mollusks from the intertidal zone during the lowest tides, their activity being seasonally tuned by the tidal cycle. Between March and September they target mussels (Mytilus edulis) and others bivalves, and between December and March a small size octopus species (Octopus tehuelchus). El Riacho , an area with an extensive intertidal zone, is a traditional fishing location (Fig. 1) where a community of 19 gatherers and their families operate. Some are permanent residents, others occupy temporary residences when tides are appropriate. By 2001 some serious problems inthe fishery management system became apparent: under a permit system there was no effective control of access, individual fishing permits were valid for only one year, harvest regulations were not enforced, and tourists harvested mussels and octopus using destructive practices. Decision-making was strictly top-down. Even though the gatherers from El Riacho did not have an organizational tradition, they mobilized to demand solutions from the managers, requesting exclusive access rights to their traditional fishing areas. The provincial fishing authority established a technical commission to search for management alternatives, a partnership between fishers,technical staff from the fishing authority and researchers. Attending to the system characteristics, a study was conducted to evaluate the merits of a TURF. The study contemplated: (i) A diagnostic of the system: community, resource and management; (ii) Meetings with the community to identify problems and discuss possible solutions; (iii) Construction of a GIS of the fishing grounds (Figure 1); (iv) Surveys to evaluate mussel abundance and size composition, and monitoring of the fishing process (Figure 2); (v) Quantification of resource use by people from outside the fishing community (Figure 3). A series of critical events took place over a two-year period: 1.The technical commission recommended granting exclusive use rights (in the form of a TURF) to the fishing community. 2.The steps for transition from an individual-license system to communal use rights were outlined.3.To facilitate the implementation process, the fishing authority created an "Evaluation Area", where exclusive rights for fishing were given to the members of the community in the form of individual annual licenses. 4.Gatherers identified the community membership based on history and participation in the activity. The membership defined by the community was accepted by the fishing authority. 5.Discussion of the TURF option provided an incentive for the community to organize and to work with researchers and managers in an incipient co-management program. 6.Actions by the fishing authority were too slow and insufficient: fishing rights were individual and the community had no control on entry, annual permits did not provide a time-horizon adequate to promote responsible behavior, and the code of conduct developed by the community was not backed by effective sanctions from the fishing authority. The implementation of the TURF is at an experimental stage but results have been rather impressive, particularly in providing incentives for organization in a community widely perceived as hopelessly marginal. Recommendations from this study are to strengthen the local co-management system, providing a scenario adequate to consolidate users rights and their role in management. Although small, this experience is interesting because it is the first case in which TURFs are evaluated as a fishery management option in the southwest Atlantic (south of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina).

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