Why fishers want a closed area in their fishing grounds: Exploring perceptions and attitudes to sustainable fisheries and conservation 10 years post closure in Labrador, Canada

• This is unique as a community initiated closure in a boreal offshore environment.
• Fishers valued the closure as a buffer against not having any fishery at all.
• 73.7% said that without the closure, there would be no fishery today.
• Local fishers showed willingness to reduce effort and concerns about biodiversity.
• Utilising areas that already have support could meet conservation targets.

The Hawke Box on the Labrador continental shelf has been closed to trawling and gillnetting but open for snow crab (Chionocetes opilio) pot fishing for three months of the year for the past decade. The closure was instigated by fishers and long-standing adjacent communities. To explore why, 19 local fishers were interviewed in March 2012, the majority of whom fished both snow crab (in the Box) and trawled for shrimp, (Pandalus spp.), now prohibited. All respondents indicated that the closure was beneficial to them, their community, and marine life. Respondents believed that protecting the area from trawling was the primary reason they still have a viable fishery, despite little improvement in Snow crab since the closure and their own partial exclusion. Fishers understood that reducing their own (not someone else's) fishing effort would likely enhance long-term sustainability of livelihoods. A full 94.7% believed that fisheries and conservation are compatible goals. Closures with fishers support based on local knowledge are more likely to meet fishery and conservation goals than those that do not. Closures can become building blocks of an ecosystem based management approach that includes fishers as part of the system, meeting both international marine protection targets and fisheries production goals.