Fisheries assessment: What can be learned from interviewing resource users?

Fishers have detailed knowledge of their resources, their environment, and their fishing practices that is rarely systematically collected. We conducted three types of interviews with coastal Newfoundland fishers to identify the range of information available, to see if it could be quantified, and to explore its potential for reconstructing trends within fisheries. These fishers have many terms for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), each associated with characteristic patterns of seasonal movement and availability to gear and indicating the location of several coastal spawning areas. They described a variety of changes in fishing practice. Of the four changes that could be quantified, all contributed to decadal-scale increases in catch efficiency prior to 1992, while change in catch per unit of effort for cod was consistently negative at decadal scales. For these fishers' lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus) roe fishery, catch per unit of effort was consistently negative in the 1990s. We describe ways to access the large reservoir of information held by fishers, the use of several cross-checks to identify consistent patterns, and the use of trends and patterns to broaden the basis for interpreting quantitative surveys used in fisheries assessment. Local information from resource users can be assembled in forms usable in quantitative stock assessments.