Adaptive Strategies of Small-scale Fishers in Yucatan Mexico: Dealing with Risk and Uncertainty

Worldwide there is a recognition that fishing communities face challenges in changing environments, changing markets, and under different types of stressors. In this context, it is important to identify the causal factors of vulnerability and to understand how people deal with them, in order to find ways to reduce the impact of future threats and to develop adaptive capacities for the impacted communities. We present two case studies in Yucatan Mexico, to illustrate how changes in resource abundance, market demand, and policy interventions, can influence fisher's strategies and their capacity to adapt to such changes. Information from interviews and log- books allowed to identify cooperation processes in a fishing community, however, competition came into place in that community when a new commercial sea cucumber fishery created a ‘gold rush' situation, bringing conflict in what seemed a cohesive coastal community. We also evaluated risk on the health and safety of the fishers that target sea cucumber and lobster based on diving, they tend to disregard potential risk when resource abundance decreases or when market demand increases. The analyzed cases show the complexity of marine resource governance in Yucatan, like in other regions, which demand to understand and identify the factors underlying people's behavior and the decisions they make, especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty. We point out that, in order to reduce vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacity of coastal communities, it is necessary to promote cooperation, which in turn can facilitate fisheries governance.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Dysbaric osteonecrosis (DON) among the artisanal diving fishermen of Yucatán, Mexico.

IntroductionArtisanal diving fishermen in Yucatán, Mexico have high rates of decompression sickness as a result of frequently unsafe diving practices with surface supplied compressed air. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of dysbaric osteonecrosis (DON), a type of avascular necrosis, in the most susceptible joints in a cohort of these fishermen.MethodsWe performed radiographs of bilateral shoulders, hips, and knees of 39 fishermen in Mexico and surveyed them about their medical and diving histories. We performed pairwise correlations to examine if the fishermen's diving behaviours affected the numbers of joints with DON.ResultsThe radiographs revealed Grade II or higher DON in 30/39 (76.9%) of the fishermen. Twenty-two of 39 fishermen (56.4%) had at least two affected joints. The number of joints with DON positively correlates with the lifetime maximum diving depth and average bottom time.ConclusionsThese findings represent among the highest prevalence rates of DON in divers and reflect the wide-spread scale of decompression sickness among these fishermen. Through this work, we hope to further educate the fishermen on the sequelae of their diving with the aim of improving their diving safety