Fishing Activity of the Medium Scale Fleet on the Extreme Southern Brazil

Abstract

The artisanal fishery, established in the estuary of Patos Lagoon since the nineteen century, went through a transition period during the 1980’s when a new fishing are in coastal waters started to be exploited, being then classified as Coastal Medium-scale Fishery. In this study the changes and the characteristics that occurred with this type of exploitation during the period of 1991 and 1995 are evaluated. A total of 105 boats was registered in 1995 of which 100 were gill netters, three purse seiners, and two were trawlers. Comparing the two periods, the size of the boats and their loading capacity increased while the number of boats decreased. The exploitation model of the fishery with gillnets (based on Larkin 1982) is presented and discussed for two target species. Gillnets used to catch bluefish Pomatomus saltratix and striped weakfish Cynoscion guatucupa were longer and they remained fishing for longer periods, while the mesh size decreased. In the case of M. furnieri, while the nets were clearly smaller, the decrease on the mesh size was not evident, indicating that the species had reached the stage of overexploitation preciously to the other two.