Gustavo Enrique Chiaramonte
Sharks, skates and rays populations around the world are being affected both directly and indirectly by a wide array of human activities. As a result, many populations are depleted, and some species are considered to be threatened with extinction as a result of several factors (life history strategies, rapid growth of fisheries, very high levels of mortality as bycatch, and degradation of important nursery grounds).
In the Puerto Quequén coastal bottom trawl fishery, 24 chondrichthyans species were identified, from which 14 are commercial species. Differences in the survivorship were not yet evaluated in a conservation approach.
Surveys onboard the commercial coastal fleet at Puerto Quequén will allow us to estimate the figures of fatalities and survivors in elasmobranchs captured by the bottom trawlers. In the case of survivors we will estimate the real chances of the fishes to survive. Differences in survivorship of the commercial species could be used as a management tool to mitigate the fish mortality by bottom trawlers. Since mature males and females specimens of elasmobranch are easy to recognize, species with medium to high survivorship could be protected by a ban for reproductive females.
This ban needs some other tools for it to be successful (e.g. an education plan for the fishery community). The goal of this conservation tool helps to stop the depletion of the species of elasmobranchs threatened by the over-fishing, set a seed for the development of a conservation plan for elasmobranchs in Argentina and work to transform coastal fisheries to a sustainable activity for the conservation of both fish and fishers.