Socioeconomic and biological causes of management failures in European artisanal fisheries: the case of Galicia (NW Spain)

Coastal ecosystems and artisanal fisheries show a great complexity due to t he high number of human factors that influence their functioning and to the number of components involved in the fishing activity. Moreover, a great n umber of stocks exploited by coastal artisanal fisheries are invertebrates with a strong and persistent spatial structure and a population dynamics th at do not fit the finfish models. The present state of the artisanal coasta l fisheries in Galicia (NW Spain) is analyzed, presenting different symptom s of a general state of overexploitation derived from the mismatch between management (derived from models designed for industrial finfisheries) and t he biological and socioeconomic context. We propose to modify the strategie s of research to use inexpensive and rapid methodologies and introduce the fishers' ecological knowledge. A new management policy is outlined based in the establishment of territorial users' rights, the involvement of fishers in the assessment and management process, and the use of protected areas a nd minimum sizes as key regulation tools. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.