Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
8871993 | Marine Pollution Bulletin | 2017 | 7 Pages |
Abstract
Destructive fishing using explosives occurs in a number of countries worldwide, negatively impacting coral reefs and fisheries on which millions of people rely. Documenting, quantifying and combating the problem has proved problematic. In March-April 2015 231Â h of acoustic data were collected over 2692Â km of systematically laid transects along the entire coast of Tanzania. A total of 318 blasts were confirmed using a combination of manual and supervised semi-autonomous detection. Blasts were detected along the entire coastline, but almost 62% were within 80Â km of Dar es Salaam, where blast frequency reached almost 10Â blasts/h. This study is one of the first to use acoustic monitoring to provide a spatial assessment of the intensity of blast fishing. This can be a useful tool that can provide reliable data to define hotspots where the activity is concentrated and determine where enforcement should be focused for maximum impact.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Oceanography
Authors
Gill Braulik, Anja Wittich, Jamie Macaulay, Magreth Kasuga, Jonathan Gordon, Tim R.B. Davenport, Douglas Gillespie,