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outfitted itself with new gear and began traveling further offshore (Revelo and ..... in small pelagic fisheries in Ecuador and promoted the development and ..... Based on information available in personal and operators web sites, the ..... at: http://www.magap.gob.ec/mag01/index.php/prensa-boletinesprensa/2736-reunion-.
Fisheries Centre The University of British Columbia

Working Paper Series Working Paper #2015 - 34 Marine Fisheries Catch Reconstructions for Continental Ecuador: 1950-2010 Juan José Alava, Alasdair Lindop, and Jennifer Jacquet Year: 2015

Email: [email protected] This working paper is made available by the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada.

MARINE FISHERIES CATCH RECONSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTINENTAL ECUADOR: 1950-2010 Juan José Alavaa,b,c, Alasdair Lindopa, and Jennifer Jacqueta,d aSea

Around Us, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada bSchool of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada cFundación Ecuatoriana para el Estudio de Mamíferos Marinos (FEMM), Guayaquil, Ecuador dEnvironmental Studies Program, New York University, 285 Mercer St., New York, NY 10003 [email protected], [email protected] , [email protected]

ABSTRACT Ecuador is considered the fishing capital in the Southeastern Tropical Pacific where it harbors the largest tuna and artisanal fisheries in the region. Despite being one of the smallest countries in the world, Ecuador embraces about 234 fishing ports and villages with 63,972–87,278 fishers along the Ecuadorian mainland coast. This paper presents reconstructions of Ecuador’s mainland fisheries catches in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) over the 1950-2010 time period. Total landings associated with the industrial and artisanal fisheries were compiled and analyzed in an effort to accurately depict the amount of seafood that has been extracted from this country over the last six decades. Total reconstructed catch averaged 91,400 t·year-1 for the first two decades, increased to a peak of 2.2 million t in 1985, and then decreased again, leveling out at an average of 360,500 t·year-1 from 2002-2010. The total catch for all sectors from 1950 to 2010 was almost 30.2 million t, of which the small pelagic fishery, artisanal fisheries, shrimp fishery and industrially tuna fishery contributed 74%%, 19% and 4%%, and 2% respectively. Subsistence fisheries represented mainly by mangrove cockles and red crab play an important role for the local economy of ancestral communities of fishers relying on estuarine mangrove forests, but overfishing may jeopardize the sustainable harvest of these species. Commerce of shark fins extracted from bycaught sharks are officially permitted by the Ecuadorian government, but questions linger whether some shark species are targeted or incidentally captured even with recent efforts to control shark fisheries in this nation. While a good agreement was found between the industrial tuna fisheries reported by local agencies and FAO tuna catches, indicating reliable transferring of data, discards and landed by-catch in the shrimp industry are under-reported, as are small pelagic fisheries and data from the artisanal fisheries sector (e.g. shark landings). As a result, this reconstruction shows that, overall, Ecuador’s fisheries catches (for the mainland EEZ) are 1.9 times those reported to FAO. Tradeoffs need to be made to lessen unsustainable fishing activities while conserving threatened fish species and managing sustainable fisheries in the long term.

INTRODUCTION Five thousand years ago, maritime cultures on Ecuador’s southern coastline made rafts of balsa wood. They floated upon the eastern Pacific searching for fish and diving for Spondylus (Spondylus calcifer and Spondylus princeps), thorny oysters with red, orange, or purple-hued lips that they carved into jewelry and used in a system of bartering over vast distances. Fishers eventually traded balsa wood rafts for canoes, which they used to travel the coast and catch demersal fish (Revelo and Guzmán 1997)

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For thousands of years the low-tech fisheries off the Ecuadorian coast looked more or less the same. But over the last half-century, big changes have taken place for Ecuador’s fisheries, due to the introduction of industrial fisheries that help feed a global market for seafood and many new technologies. It is this era—from the 1950s onward—that is the focus of this study. Today, five provinces form the coastal region of continental Ecuador: Esmeraldas, Manabi, Guayas, Santa Elena and El Oro. The Galapagos Islands are also an Ecuadorian territory but are not considered in this study, which deals exclusively with the Ecuadorian mainland. Ecuador is considered a low-income country with negative economic growth. Sachs (2005) attributes Ecuador’s perilous economic conditions to: 1) geographical difficulties; 2) political rifts and the rich/poor divide between Ecuadorians of European descent and indigenous or Mestizo populations; and 3) the country’s vulnerability to extreme external shocks (e.g. instability in international prices for leading exported commodities). Despite being a poor nation overall and a relatively small country (i.e., 256 370 km2 or 0.19% of the terrestrial surface of the Earth), Ecuador is home to 14 million people, as well as high levels of natural resources, including marine biodiversity (Figure 1). Ecuador is also among the top 25 nations in the world for landed value of fish and fisheries products, which contribute a reported 6% to the national gross domestic product (GDP) (Boyd 2010).

Figure 1: Map of Ecuador with its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Industrial fishing began in the 1950s. Fisheries targeted small amounts of tuna for export, and a tuna canning industry began in the late 1950s. For instance, boats caught 1,129 t of tuna in 1957, more than half of which was canned and one-fifth was frozen for export (Chiriboga 1966). By 1965, less than ten years later, Ecuador was catching 13 times more tuna. Today, the tuna fisheries, important to both the industrial and small-scale sector, are located mainly in Manabí,

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Santa Elena and Guayas provinces in Ecuador’s continental coast. The species of Scombridae that are the most commonly targeted are the yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus), skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) and wahoo (Acanthocybium solandri). In addition, several other species regularly captured are the black skipjack (Euthynnus lineatus), striped bonito (Sarda orientalis), and Pacific sierra (Scomberomorus sierra) (Cabanilla 2007; Herrera et al. 2007) The shrimp industry also came to Ecuador in the 1950s (Chiriboga 1966) and by 1963 the industry had grown to 156 boats with 3,000 crew catching 200 pounds of shrimp tails daily (INP 1964). In the 1980s, shrimpers were fishing illegally inside the 8-mile limit and causing conflict with artisanal fishers and their gear (Anon 1998). In 1996, the shrimp fleet registered 266 boats with an annual catch of 4,800-6,600 t between 1985-1995 (Revelo and Guzmán 1997). Marine shrimps were very important to the Ecuadorian economy through the 1970s and 80s, but they were overfished (Chalén 2010) and a series of pathogens were introduced (Cruz et al. 2003). The wild shrimp species harvested include mainly Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei), Western white shrimp (L. occidentalis), Pacific blue shrimp (L. stylirostris), as well as yellowleg or brown shrimp (Farfantepenaeus californiensis) and crystal or pink shrimp (F. brevirostris). Other species of shrimps captured are deep sea shrimp (Solenocera agassizi) and titi shrimp (Protrachypene precipua). Today there are between 130-143 shrimp trawlers, which continue to land their shrimp catches in the major ports of Guayaquil, Puerto Bolivar, Manta, Esmeralda, Posorja, and Puerto el Morro. Most shrimp exported from Ecuador today is farmed (Cruz et al. 2003). In the mid-1960s, an industrial purse seining fleet developed to fish small pelagic species (e.g., anchovy, sardines, mackerel, herring) for fishmeal (Revelo and Guzmán 1997). However, the cold Humboldt Current does not travel throughout Ecuador’s continental waters and so Ecuador’s anchovy population is smaller than Ecuador’s southern neighbors Peru or Chile. In 1964, there was one fishmeal factory in Manta producing roughly 1,000 t of fishmeal each year while the artisanal sector was producing around 400 t (Quiroga and Armas 1964). Today, there are fishmeal factories in several other fishing communities and harbors, including Salango, Posorja and Anconcito (González et al. 2006). At present, fisheries have shifted from small pelagic species usually targeted for fishmeal to demersal fish to sell as fishmeal (González et al. 2006; Prado 2009). In 2007, approximately 5,000 t of white fish were landed for this purpose (Jurado and Prado 1998). There has been estimated that for each ton of fishmeal produced, about 4 tonnes of fish are required. Ecuadorian fishery researchers have considered this as a waste of biomass because of the high commercial and protein value that otherwise can be used for human consumption (Jurado and Prado 1998; González et al. 2006; Prado 2009), which echo global concerns about the wastefulness of the fishmeal industry (Diana 2009; Duarte et al. 2009; Pikitch et al. 2012). In the meantime, small-scale fisheries, which used cotton nets and canoes until the mid-1960s, began competing for the same fish resources as the industrial sector, and also began to mechanize their fleet with motors (Revelo and Guzmán 1997), as well as nylon nets and fiberglass boats (Gaibor et al. 2002). In the early 1970s, small-scale fishers began fishing for large pelagics (Revelo and Guzmán 1997). In the 1980s, demand for whitefish for export grew but the industrial fishery was not equipped to fish for them so again the small-scale sector outfitted itself with new gear and began traveling further offshore (Revelo and Guzmán 1997). Through the 1980s, fresh fish exports (by air) increased while internal consumption declined in spite of legal requirements for frozen fish firms to supply 5 percent of their product to the internal market (Wood et al. 1998).

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As the industrial sector has grown, so, too has the artisanal fishing sector, which Ecuadorian law defines as fishers using manual gears and small boats to fish for domestic consumption as well as earnings. The growth in the artisanal sector is evident in the increasing numbers of ports, boats, and fishers. In the late 1980s, artisanal fisheries landed their catch at an estimated 57 ports (CFN 1988), 70 ports in the early 1990s (Campbell et al. 1991), and 158 different ports in the late 1990s. During the 1980-1990 period the Ecuadorian artisanal fleet was estimated to have 1,900 boats (Salas et al. 2007), while some 7,000 vessels were operating in the early 1990s. By the late 1990s, this number had raised to an estimated 15,500 artisanal vessels (Ormaza and Ochoa 1999). More recently, up to 15,900 boats are thought to be active in 2008 (Coayla Berroa and Rivera Miranda 2008). These numbers show a doubling of vessels in less than one decade. The most common vessels in the artisanal sector are small rafts (2-3 crewmembers) with 20-50 HP outboard motors; long wooden canoes for 3-4 crewmembers; and 10 m wooden or fiberglass-open boats, with 75-100 hp outboard motors (Massay 1987). Fishing techniques include surface and deep longlines (4-11.5 km in length with about 100-1,500 hooks); surface (3 km in length and 15 m in depth) and deep (300-400 m in length) gillnets; and other tools (e.g. hand line, scissor-net, hummer-bottom-gillnet, chinchorro) (Cedeño 1987; Martínez et al. 1991; Gaibor et al. 2002). Fifty percent of the artisanal fishing vessels use gillnets (Martínez et al. 1991). Artisanal fishing effort has increased greatly since 1994, with the ensemble of a “mother” or supply wooden ship coupled with up to 4 or ten fiber glass boats with the aim to increase the intensity of the fishing effort around fishing zones, which included harvesting using gillnets, longlines and hand-lines in these areas and even close to the Galapagos (Herrera et al. 2007; M. Peralta, pers. comm., Instituto Nacional de Pesca-INP, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 4 June 2010). ); Although at the beginning the role of the “mother” ship was only to bring boats to the fishing zones, actually it also conducts fishing activities in addition to the fiberglass boats (M. Peralta, pers. comm. Instituto Nacional de Pesca-INP, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 4 June 2010). More recently, the Minister of Agriculture, Cattle, Aquaculture and Fisheries of Ecuador through the Sub-Secretariat of Fisheries Resources (SRP) has undertaken the Fisheries Census Project in order to collect new fishery data and assess the fishing communities along Ecuador’s mainland/continental coast. The first phase took place in late 2009/early 2010, when about 118 fishing communities out of 173 were assessed, reflecting a total of 43,634 artisanal fishers. In 2011, the second phase began, during which 234 fishing communities were registered and the population of artisanal fishers was estimated to be between 63,972 and 87,278. 1 Amidst all of this activity and general growth of the fishing sector, the monitoring of Ecuadorian fisheries, large or relatively small, has not been comprehensive. Although the National Fisheries Institute began monitoring commercial fisheries in 1960 (Cruz et al. 2003), the statistics are questionable and often under-reported. For instance, Patterson et al. (1990) found the reported landings of small pelagic fishes dubious when compared to fishmeal production. Monitoring fishmeal plants and human consumption, Patterson et al. (1990) re-estimated small pelagic catches for fishmeal using a conversion factor of 4.45 tonnes of fish required to make one tonne of meal, which is conservative when compared to other estimates of fishmeal production ratios 1

http://www.subpesca.gob.ec/subpesca401-censo-pesquero-registra-243-comunidades-pesqueras.html (Accessed 02/04/2014) 4

(e.g.,Castillo and Mendo 1987). He found the reported catches of small pelagic fishes were far too low. Similarly, Jacquet et al. (2008) found the shark catches in Ecuador were also seriously under-reported. For the small-scale sector, national catch reports for the 1990s are representative of only eight of the 138 artisanal ports. Discarded fish at sea are also not reported, which is common in fisheries around the world (Zeller and Pauly 1995). The goal of this study, like many others (e.g.,Jacquet et al. 2008), is to construct a more accurate profile of fisheries catches from the ground up, in this case for the mainland of Ecuador. MATERIALS AND METHODS Industrial tuna, billfishes, mahi mahi, and shrimp FAO tuna landings were compared to those reported in reports from official governmental agencies, including the Instituto Nacional de Pesca, INP (National Institute of Fisheries of Ecuador) and Sub-Secretariat of Fishery Resources (SRP), between 1991 and 2010 (Arriaga and Martinez 2002; Herrera et al. 2007; Pacheco-Bedoya 2010, 2011). This comparison revealed relatively good transfer of commercial tuna data between the agencies (INP/SRP) of the Ecuadorian government and the FAO, except for minor differences between the period 2000 and 2008 when catches for yellowfin, bigeye and skipjack tuna reported by INP (PachecoBedoya 2011) was about 10% higher than the FAO tuna data for this specific species. Tuna landings at Ecuador’s mainland coast were adjusted to exclude tuna catches (i.e. yellowfin, bigeye and skipjack tuna) from the high seas (i.e. tuna catches out of the EEZ) and Galapagos waters using calculations from (Schiller et al. 2013). After the adjustment, FAO tuna data were accepted as Ecuadorian tuna fishery catches. Similarly, we also took the FAO landings for billfishes, mahi mahi, and shrimps as accurate industrial reports. FAO data for the shrimp fishery is somewhat limited, in particular for titi shrimp, which is only reported from 2007 onwards. Little and Hererra (1992) describe catches of titi shrimp in 1991, indicating the existence of a fishery for at least 20 years, but since first referencing the report it has become unavailable so we have been unable to verify the catch data. Although whiteleg shrimp are reported as far back as 1950, reporting for western white shrimp and yellow leg shrimp begins only in 1995, whilst reporting starts for blue shrimp and crystal shrimp in 2000 and it is unlikely that the shrimp fishery was targeting a single species for so long. Therefore, the FAO shrimp data should be considered with caution and further work is necessary. Discards and landed by-catch from shrimp trawlers Discarding is a common practice within the fishing industry, and unwanted fish that have been caught are simply thrown back to sea. Discards can include damaged fish, non-target species, and undamaged target species that are discarded to make room for more valuable ones. Shrimp trawl fisheries are typically associated with considerable by-catch, which can either be landed or discarded at sea. There are two major fishing fleets dedicated to harvest shrimp, including the shrimp ("Langostino") trawl vessels and the titi shrimp ("Pomada") trawl vessels. The former mainly capture Pacific white shrimp (L. vannamei), Western white shrimp (L. occidentalis), Pacific blue shrimp (L. stylirostris), followed by yellowleg/brown shrimp (F. californiensis) and crystal/pink shrimp (F. brevirostris), while the latter harvest exclusively titi shrimp (P. precipua). Yet, due to the indiscriminate nature of fishing gear (i.e., shrimp trawl nets) used to harvest shrimp, by-catch is common in shrimp fisheries and often a large portion of incidental catches is thrown overboard. However, this portion of the catch, known as discards, is rarely, if ever reported (Zeller and Pauly 1995).

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Shrimp by-catch: reconstruction methods An estimate of by-catch was available for 1982 from Wood et al. (1998), who reported 18,000 t of landed by-catch and 23,500 t of overall by-catch (i.e., 5,500 t discards) for the 8,000 t of shrimp caught that year (which means shrimp was 25% of total catch – a relatively conservative ratio compared to other shrimp fisheries). We then used this by-catch ratio (2.94 t by-catch: 1 t shrimp) against official shrimp catches reported by the FAO to estimate the total by-catch for 1950-2009 (minus 1982). Based on Wood et al. (1998), we estimated a ratio of 18,000 t of landed by-catch for the 8,000 t of shrimp caught in 1982 to estimate landed by-catch as a ratio to official FAO shrimp catches for 1950-1981 and 1983-2010. Given that Wood et al. (1998) found discards represented 23% of total by-catch, we used this percentage to distinguish the discards from our overall by-catch estimation. As a result, we obtained a 1950-2010 times series estimate of discards. With regard to the remainder of by-catch, i.e., landed by-catch, we assume they were represented in the reported estimates of small pelagic fish and whitefish. A report by Little and Hererra (1992) also provided data which allowed us to calculate by-catch to shrimp ratios (separate data were given for the two types of vessels: Langostino and titi shrimp targeting vessels which are known as Pomada) as well as retained by-catch to discarded bycatch ratios. They estimated a by-catch/shrimp ratio of 11.6 for Langostino vessels (with 46% of by-catch being discarded) and 1.4 for Pomada vessels (with 70% of by-catch being discarded). All of these values produce higher amounts of total by-catch and a greater amount of that catch discarded, except for the by-catch/shrimp ratio for the titi shrimp fishery. However, the Langostino vessels make up the majority of the catch, and therefore the more conservative estimates of Wood et al. (1998) were used in the reconstruction. The report by Little and Hererra (1992) was still utilized as it contained the only reliable estimation in the existing literature for the species composition encompassing the by-catch in Ecuadorian shrimp trawlers (shrimp and titi shrimp vessels). This report contains data reported for vessels that operated along the Ecuadorian coast from March to November 1991, as shown in Table 1 (Little and Hererra 1992). The shrimp trawl by-catch is basically encompassed by 261 species of marine fauna (56 families), in which 83% are whitefish (217 species), accounting for 75-90% of the shrimp trawler catches (Little and Hererra 1992). 2 Based on the data reported by Little and Herrera (1992), there was an important number of fish families caught in the by-catch and the ichthyofauna generally consisted of species associated with soft substrates of the trawling grounds, as shown in Table 1. Rays accounted for a large proportion (>30-50%) of the total catches and these were nearly always discarded. Demersal species, which are important to artisanal fishers, appeared frequently in by-catch and retained fish was presumably consumed by local communities or processed for exportation (Little and Hererra 1992). Currently, several species of fish caught as by-catch include flounders (Paralichthys woolmani), croakers/drums or “corvinas” (weakfish species, Cynoscion spp.), mullets (Mugil cephalus), white snook (Centropomus viridis), tilefish or ocean whitefish (Caulolatilus affinis), Pacific harvestfish/pompanos or “chazo/gallinaza” (Peprilus medius), moonfish (Selene peruviana), hakes (Merluccius gayi), snappers (Lutjanus), and several species of groupers (Epinephelus spp.; Mycteroperca xenarcha; Diplectrum maximum; Paralabrax callaensis), which are also traditionally targeted by artisanal fisheries2, as reported in Table 1. To the best of our knowledge, data on the actual composition for these white fish species have not been reported after 1991 and anecdotic information available from local experts was unavailable.

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http://www.subpesca.gob.ec/subpesca274-srp-explica-eliminacion-de-pesca-de-arrastre.html (Accessed 02/04/2014) 6

For this reconstruction, species breakdown was determined using the by-catch data from Little and Hererra (1992) in Table 1. For taxa such as Pomadasidae where a range of percentages was given, the mid-point was taken, and then the percentages were normalized to get back to a total of 100%. These percentages were then applied to the by-catch and discard totals for each year. Industrial small pelagic fish catches The monitoring and analysis of fisheries and landings involving the harvesting of small pelagic fishes conducted by the purse seiner fleet was started in 1981 by the National Institute of Fisheries (Instituto Nacional de Pesca, INP) through the Small Pelagic Fishes Program (González et al. 2006; Prado 2009). The Program aims to monitor the fleet to collect fisheries biological data to assess the population status and recommend management actions for sustainable harvesting. It is known that the small pelagic fisheries began in the 1960s when the first wooden vessels were built to fish thread herrings (aka, pinchagua), Opisthonema spp. (González et al. 2006). Subsequently, after the collapse of the Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens) in Peru during the 1970s, a substantial number of high scale, stainless steel vessels were purchased and transported from Peru by Ecuadorian companies. The number of the fleet increased from 48 small, wooden vessels in 1971 to 277 vessels, including both wooden and stainless steel vessels, in 1991 (Aguilar 1993; González et al. 2006) This new fleet caused a significant increase in small pelagic fisheries in Ecuador and promoted the development and improvement of existing fish meal factories and canning industries. Due to the increased number of vessels and broad magnitude of the new fleet, new fishing zones were explored and several other small pelagic fish species were exploited, including sardines (Sardinops sagax; Etrumeus teres), mackerel (Scomber japonicus), and Pacific anchoveta (Cetengraulis mysticetus), which were present in Ecuadorian waters, but not previously harvestable due to limitations of the former fleet. In time, the overcapacity in the fleet took a considerable biomass of small pelagic fish, which has showed an evident decline since the beginning of the 1990s (González et al. 2006; Prado 2009). The decline was attributed to not only the fishing pressure, but the ENSO events (i.e. El Niño) that occurred during 1982-1983, 1987-1988, 1991-1992, and 1997-1998, when ocean-atmospheric conditions and lack of primary productivity impaired food availability for pelagic fish (Aguilar 1993, 1999). Mackerel (S. japonicus) and Southern sardine or South American pilchard (S. sagax) sustained the rapid growth of the industry since 1974. During the 1981-1990 period, the total landings reached a maximum volume of 1,998,587 tonnes in 1985 and a minimum of 238,891 tonnes in 1990 (González et al. 2006). The highest biomass harvested between 1984 and 1986, and following decline from 1990 to 1994 coincides with the diminishing landings of the South America pilchard. In 1995, a gradual increment of landings was reported, reaching approximately 623,500 tonnes by 1996 and dropping again in 1998 with about 189,000 tonnes (González et al. 2006). A slow increment in landings is also observed by 1999, reaching up to 434,356 tonnes in 2001, when Chilean jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) and chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) made up most of the landings, in a similar fashion to that reported in 1995. During 1999-2000 and after 2001, the composition of the landings appeared to be represented mainly by taxa other than the common species traditionally harvested to sustain the small pelagic fisheries (e.g., thread herrings, mackerel, South American pilchard/sardine and red eye round herring)..This grouping of fish species are used mainly for the elaboration of fishmeal meal (González et al. 2006; Prado 2009) and includes the following fish species: Shortfin scad or “picudillo” (Decapterus macrosoma); Mexican moonfish or “carita” (Selene oerstedii); Pacific bumper or “hojita” (Chloroscombrus orqueta); Pacific harvestfish/pompano (Peprilus medius); Longnose anchovy or “rollizo” (Anchoa nasus), catfish or “bagre” (Arius spp); sea robins or “gallineta” (Prionotus spp); and Pacific drum or “barriga juma” (Larimus gulosus).

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While the Peruvian anchoveta/anchovy (E. ringens) emerged in Ecuadorian waters in 2001 due to its recovery from exploitation during the 1970s, of particular concern is the drastic decrease and total absence of the South American pilchard or Southern sardine (S. sagax) from 2005 to 2010 in the Ecuadorian landings. This has also caused fishers to target other species (demersal/bottom dweller fish). Overfishing and capture of small size fish, in some cases below the sexual maturity average size (e.g. thread herrings, mackerel), and violations of fishing permits/seasons (a.k.a., “vedas”), coupled with density independent events (i.e. ENSOs), have negatively impacted small pelagic fish populations off Ecuador. Small pelagic fishery: Reconstruction methods Based on gray literature, we obtained estimates of industrial small pelagic landings for 19812010 (Patterson et al. 1990; Patterson and Scott 1991; Arriaga and Martinez 2002; González et al. 2006; Prado 2009; INP 2010). These estimates were compared to totals of the FAO small pelagic landings, including the taxa mentioned in the ‘Others’ section that were reported by the FAO data (Table 2) – shortfin scad (Decapterus macrosoma), sea catfish (Ariidae) and the pacific bumper (Chloroscombrus orqueta). For these 29 years, annual small pelagic catches were on average 1.55 times the small pelagic catches reported by FAO on behalf of Ecuador. We multiplied small pelagic catches reported by FAO from 1963-1980 by the average factor between 1981-1984 (2.35) to obtain better estimates of industrial small pelagic catches. There were no catches of small pelagic fish reported before 1963. The species composition of total catches for the small pelagic fishery was disaggregated by species per year for the period 1981-2010, based on the existing literature mentioned above. For the years 1963-1980, the average contribution of each taxon for 1981-1983 was calculated and carried back for each year. The taxa collectively caught for fishmeal were categorized as ‘miscellaneous marine fishes’. Artisanal marine fish catches Artisanal fishing communities of Ecuador use mainly longlines and surface gillnets (mesh eye: 7.5-13 cm) to capture pelagic fishes such as dolphinfish or mahi mahi, locally known as “dorado” (Coryphaena hippurus); skipjack tuna (K. pelamis); wahoo (A. solandri), yellowfin tuna (T. albacares); bigeye tuna (T. obesus); sword fish (Xiphias gladius); sailfish (Istiophorous platypterus); and different species of marlins: striped (Tetraptorus audax); black marlin (Makaira indica); and blue marilin (Makaira nigricans) (Herrera et al. 2007; Alava et al. 2012). These fisheries also include some shark species that are either targeted or incidentally captured, including the blue shark (Prionace glauca); thresher-sharks (Alopias spp.); hammerhead-sharks (Sphyrna zygaena; S. lewini); the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas); the Oceanic whitetip shark (C. longimanus); mako-sharks (Isurus oxyrinchus); the Pacific angel shark (Squatina californica), as well as several species of rays (Dasyatis longus; D. brevis; Mobula spp.; Aetobatus narinari; Gymnura marmorata; Rhinoptera steindachneri; Rhinobatus leucorhynus; Torpedo tremens; and, Raja velezi), as reported elsewhere (Aguilar et al. 2007; Jacquet et al. 2008; Peralta 2009). Artisanal fishery: reconstruction methods Official small-scale catch estimates were available for 1963, 1974-1987, 1989-1995 and 2009 (Quiroga and Armas 1964; Martinez 1991; INP 1999; Peralta 2009). To derive data for the gap years, we used interpolation and extrapolation, based on separately available estimates of the number of fishers (Census 1954; Revelo and Guzmán 1997; Solís and Mendívez 1999) which we used to derive catches/fisher. 8

However, data obtained and reported nationally for small-scale Ecuadorian fisheries are representative of 8 artisanal ports at most: Esmeraldas, Manta, San Mateo, Santa Rosa, Anconcito, Engabao, Playas, Puerto Bolivar (Villón et al. 1992; Arriaga and Martinez 2002; Herrera et al. 2007). According to a 1999 survey, these 8 ports represents only 21,005 of the nation’s 56,068 artisanal fishers, who spanned the remaining 130 ports at that time (Solís and Mendívez 1999) Assuming fishers nationwide have comparable average per capita catch rates, this implies that reported catch reflects only 37.5% of Ecuador’s total catch. Using methods similar to estimating shark captures for mainland Ecuador (Jacquet et al. 2008), our estimates of small-scale landings, derived mainly from official data, were thus presumed to represent 37.5% of total artisanal catch and were increased by 2.7 times from 1950 to 2010 to give countrywide estimates of artisanal catches and account for the number of ports and 62.5% of fishers that went unmonitored. Data for shark landings were obtained largely from (Jacquet et al. 2008), which covered years between 1979 and 2004. Data for years 2005-2010 was sourced from the Ecuadorian Government (INP 2010). A species breakdown was achieved by calculating the proportion of each taxa in the reported FAO data. The most complete breakdown was reported in the most recent years, so the average contribution of each taxa in the years 2006-2008 was taken and multiplied against the reconstructed total for each year. For species that had no reported landings in those years, the average proportion for the nearest 3 years to 2006 with reported data was taken. Species breakdown for sharks was calculated based on the proportions each taxa were reported by the FAO each year. For the period 1979-1991, where there was no reported data, proportions were calculated using the average percentage of the catch each species contributed in 1991 and 1992. Several years of the reported data in the artisanal fishery contained anomalous spikes in the ‘Marine Fishes nei’ category, where catches were much larger than the reconstructed catch and almost double the reported catch for the preceding and succeeding years. These were assumed to be errors and were negatively adjusted to match the reconstructed total for that year. It should also be noted that it was determined through the Galapagos reconstruction (Schiller et al. 2013) that all reported ‘Sea cucumbers nei’ and ‘Green spiny lobster’ were catches from the EEZ surrounding Galapagos and therefore these catches were excluded from the FAO baseline comparison for the catches in the Ecuador mainland EEZ. Local Consumption In Ecuador, the annual fish and shellfish consumption as a source of protein (i.e. < 2 g of fish protein) currently ranges from 5.0 to 10 kg per person, according to FAO (2012). While the fish consumption had a maximum of 14.2 kg/person/year in 1989 (Noriega-Curtis and Vera-Rivas 1989), it decreased by a minimum average of 5.0 kg/person/year during the 2007−2009 period (FAO 2012), showing a decline of 65%. While independent consumption rates from fish market surveys or consumer studies for Ecuador were unavailable, we assume that the annual consumption rate of subsistence catches may be < 5 kg/person or fall within the range 5−10 kg/person. The local consumption of fish for subsistence has not been assessed in coastal Ecuador, but it may well represent