Solapamiento trófico entre el lobo marino de un pelo Otaria flavescens y la pesquería de arrastre demersal del golfo San Matías, Patagonia, Argentina

ROMERO, MARIA ALEJANDRA; DANS, SILVANA LAURA; GONZÁLEZ, RAÚL ALBERTO; SVENDSEN, GUILLERMO MARTIN; GARCIA, NESTOR ANIBAL; CRESPO, ENRIQUE ALBERTO

LATIN AMERICAN JOURNAL OF AQUATIC RESEARCH

UNIV CATOLICA DE VALPARAISO

Año: 2011 vol. 39 p. 344 - 358

0718-560X

ABSTRACT. As world fisheries began to decline and massive collapses were observed, the competition between marine mammals and fisheries became an issue of growing concern. San Matías Gulf (Patagonia, Argentina) is considered to be a fishery ecosystem independent of the Argentine Continental Shelf waters, with particular oceanographic and biological properties. As a semi-enclosed ecosystem, this gulf may generate particular scenarios for interactions between the demersal trawl fishery fleet and the population of South American sea lions Otaria flavescens. In this paper, the diet of the top predator and the composition of fishery catches were characterized in order to assess the trophic overlap between these two components. This analysis and a comparison of the sizes of prey consumed revealed a low probability of competition for similar resources between the fishing fleet and the marine mammals in the San Matías Gulf ecosystem.