Abstract

The mapping of costs is central to marine spatial planning, which is based on identifying trade-offs between the achievement of conservation targets (e.g. protect certain amount of the available reef) while minimising the costs to the users that depend on the ecosystem (e.g. avoiding setting a no-take area in the best fishing sites). Mapping costs is an easy task on land, where each property has a dollar value and an associated land acquisition cost. In the sea, opportunity costs are commonly used, and areas where more fishing effort occurs have a larger cost and should be avoided when setting a reserve. Spatial fishing effort is largely available for industrial fisheries from logs or satellite tracks, but spatially explicit information is generally not available for artisanal and small scale fisheries. Here we propose a method to quantify the cost of an artisanal fishery based on biological (location of fishing grounds based on satellite imagery), physical (wave exposure that restricts the access to rough locations) and economic (fuel consumption from home port) constraints. Lower costs are associated to habitats not targeted by the fishery, areas where the sea is generally rough, and regions far away from port and therefore expensive to get to in terms of fuel. We demonstrate the method in the Honduran Miskito Cays, where a marine protected area will be established and new artisanal fisheries are to be developed. By mapping the costs of the fishery we minimize the socioeconomic impacts of conservation activities and avoid expensive conserva-tion mistakes.

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