From Reef to Table: Social and Ecological Factors Affecting Coral Reef Fisheries, Artisanal Seafood Supply Chains, and Seafood Security

<div><p>Ocean and coastal ecosystems provide critical fisheries, coastal protection, and cultural benefits to communities worldwide, but these services are diminishing due to local and global threats. In response, place-based strategies involve communities and resource users in management have proliferated. Here, we present a transferable community-based approach to assess the social and ecological factors affecting resource sustainability and food security in a small-scale, coral reef fishery. Our results show that this small-scale fishery provides large-scale benefits to communities, including 7,353 ± 1547 kg yr^-1 (mean ± SE) of seafood per year, equating to >30,000 meals with an economic value of $78,432. The vast majority of the catch is used for subsistence, contributing to community food security: 58% is kept, 33.5% is given away, and 8.5% is sold. Our spatial analysis assesses the geographic distribution of community beneficiaries from the fishery (the “food shed” for the fishery), and we document that 20% of seafood procured from the fishery is used for sociocultural events that are important for social cohesion. This approach provides a method for assessing social, economic, and cultural values provided by small-scale food systems, as well as important contributions to food security, with significant implications for conservation and management. This interdisciplinary effort aims to demonstrate a transferable participatory research approach useful for resource-dependent communities as they cope with socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental change.</p></div

Dominant fishing methods, total effort (fishing hours), and catch per unit effort (CPUE in kg day^-1) with means and coefficient of variation (COV) from the one-year creel survey at Kīholo Bay.

<p>Number of observed events is also included. Line fishing includes hand pole, rod-and-reel, and flyfishing. Spear includes 3-prong pole spear and band-powered speargun. Other methods include limpet (<i>‘opihi</i>, in Hawaiian) gleaning, crabbing, aquarium fishing.</p

Weight of total reported catch and reported catch with post-landings disposition information, by trophic group, from Kīholo Bay surveys.

<p>Weight of total reported catch and reported catch with post-landings disposition information, by trophic group, from Kīholo Bay surveys.</p

Area, number of survey sites, and average biomass for each habitat structure category surveyed in Kīholo Bay.

<p>Sand habitat was not surveyed and not included in this table, though it makes up an additional 0.71 km² of habitat area (28%) in the bay. SE is standard error of the mean for transect biomass values in each category. Average biomass was expanded to the total area of each habitat structure category by trophic group, resulting in an estimate of total standing stock of resource fishes.</p

Kīholo Bay study area, including spatial delineation of sampling area for creel and fish flow surveys (orange outline) and locations of transects for ecological surveys of reef fish.

<p>Background imagery shows the spatial configuration of the bay and the reef complex, and inset shows the location in the Hawaiian Islands.</p

Economic and nutritional value of total reconstructed catch for Kīholo Bay (May 1, 2012—April 30, 2013).

<p>MP is market price. Expanded catch by species was paired with market value (TNC, unpublished data). Number of meals assumes 6-ounce servings. Fraction of meals is essentially the percentage of meals delivered by each trophic group for this study.</p

Mapping artisanal seafood supply chains as “fish flow” from the Kīholo Bay coral reef fishery.

<p>Arrows indicate locations where seafood from Kīholo is consumed. Exact locations are indicated as place-names; some destinations were only available at coarser district (moku) levels (these are indicated with asterisks). Post-landings disposition is distinguished for kept (red), given away (blue), and sold (green) seafood. Pie charts are scaled to the total catch (kg) for each destination. The numbers in each pie are the number of distribution events recorded for each destination and represent only survey-recorded end-use, not the annual expanded catch. The district boundaries, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and transportation lines were acquired from the Hawai‘i state GIS portal [<a href="http://planning.hawaii.gov/gis/download-gis-data/" target="_blank">http://planning.hawaii.gov/gis/download-gis-data/</a>].</p

Commercial catch (kg) reported to DAR 2009–2013 for the commercial reporting block surrounding Kīholo, with mean and standard error (SE).

<p>Total value was computed based on species-level market prices obtained by The Nature Conservancy through market surveys (unpubl.). ‘Opelu (mackerel scad, <i>Decapterus</i> spp) fraction of volume and value is also listed.</p

Average biomass density by trophic group for resource fishes in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), Kaho‘olawe Island Reserve (KIR, an unfished reserve in the main Hawaiian Islands), marine protected areas (MPA) in the West Hawaii region, areas open to fishing in West Hawai‘i (referred to as ‘open’), and in Kīholo Bay.

<p>MPAs included in this comparison are included in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0123856#pone.0123856.s003" target="_blank">S1 Table</a>. The multiple comparisons test suggest that resource fish biomass at Kīholo Bay was not significantly different from that of highly managed areas in West Hawai‘i or the sites which have little or no fishing regulations, which we refer to as ‘open’ (p = 0.07).</p

Fish flow from reef to table for Kīholo Bay, with variation in composition of key trophic groups throughout these artisanal supply chains.

<p>The first pie chart shows the total biomass, by tropic group, of reef fish in Kīholo Bay, as determined from in-water ecological surveys. Next, the harvest by gear type is depicted, showing how different gear types target different mixes of trophic groups; the total % of total harvest by each gear type is included in the center of each pie chart. The total expanded catch is approximately 15.2% of the standing stock biomass, and the proportions of the catch vary in comparison to the standing stock trophic composition. Finally, the last three pie charts show which trophic groups are distributed to which end use (disposition); percentages indicate the proportion of the total catch directed toward each end use (given away, kept, sold).</p