4. REPORT ON THE SPINY LOBSTER FISHERY IN BRAZIL

Sonia Maria Martins de Castro e Silva^[13], Antonio Clerton de Paula Pontes^[14] and Carlos Artur Sobreira Rocha^[15]

Description of the Fishery

The fishing of lobsters in Brazil is an activity of high social and economic importance, especially for the northeastern States. About 15 800 fishers depend directly on this fishery and it is considered that another 184 000 people are indirectly involved in the fishery sector including boat and fishing gear repair and construction, sale of fishing supplies, ice production and transport, lobster processing, marketing and export (see also Sobreira Rocha et al., 2001).

The effective area of lobster exploitation in Brazil grew from about 26 000 km² in the mid 1950s to about 80 000 km² at the end of the 1980s. Currently, the fishery extends from the State of Espírito Santo in the south to Amapá in the north, corresponding to approximately 149 300 km². In spite of the observed spatial expansion of the fishery and a significant increase in the number of boats and vessels that operate in the fishery, total annual landings have been kept at around 5 000 tonnes of tails with a value of over $60 million dollars in the export market. The export price paid for lobsters increased by US$5.9/kg over the last five years, an indication of increasing demand under stable production.

Generally, there is a perceived crisis in the fishery mostly attributed to an excessive fishing capacity applied to the lobster stock and to an increase in the quantity of undersized lobsters caught incidentally and directly in the fishery.

Fishing Gear and Methods

Gillnets ("caçoeira") are the most common fishing gear used in the fishery representing 75.5 percent of the gear used in the State of Ceará, while in the States of Pará, Alagoas, Bahia and Espírito Santo it is the only fishing gear presently in use. Lobsters are also caught with two trap types, the "covo" or "manzuá" and the "cangalha" (trap with two entrances), and, illegally, by diving with compressors (Castro and Silva, 1998).

In recent years, in the States of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará, free diving has become a new fishing method. Fishers operate around artificial reefs ("marambaias" and "parrachos") set along the coast and free dive, capturing the available lobsters with the aid of a scoop net. This new fishing method represents a menace to the stock in places with great concentrations of immature lobsters, with the added impact on the coastal environment since the artificial reefs are built with mostly with unapproved materials. Sampling carried out on fishing operations during the 2001 fishing season in the State of Ceará indicated that of 10 tonnes of lobsters sampled 8.2 tonnes were below the minimum legal size.

Prior to 1995, gillnets were prohibited in the fishery, however, starting in 1995 the Government of Brazil allowed the use of these nets. Since then a significant number of vessels using gillnets entered the fishery, resulting in a considerable increase in fishing effort (days fishing and number of trips). The most significant impact has been through the transfer of smaller gillnet boats that previously fished fish and shrimps to the lobster fishery. Given the restricted operational range of these small boats, the impact has been largely on the shallower areas where juvenile lobsters occur. Considering this situation, the Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA) has prohibited the use of gillnets as off January 2003.

Management Regulations

Current fishery management regulations in the lobster fishery in Brazil are:

• Limitation of the vessel licenses.
• Closed season from 1 January to 30 April.
• A minimum tail length of 13 cm or minimum carapace length of 7.5 cm.
• A minimum mesh size of 5 cm for the netting used in traps.
• Scuba gear is prohibited in the fishery.

• Nursery areas are closed to fishing in the following areas:

  - up to 3 miles from the coast in the State of Pernambuco between 7°33'30"S and 7°50'00"S;
  - in the State of Ceará between 39°7'00"W and 38°48'99"W;
  - in the State of Rio Grande do Norte between 5°05'00"S and 5°07'00"S, 36°12'00"W and 36°20'00"W.

• Starting in January 2003 it will be prohibited to catch lobsters with gillnets.

Given that users do not meet most of the spiny lobster management regulations, IBAMA redirected the way of administering the process to manage the resource. The new process integrates all the participants in the system to be managed (fishers, political entities, industrial and processing plant groups, scientists, managers and enforcement groups). In order to facilitate the discussions and exchange of information, a Technical Spiny Lobster Working Group was created under Law IBAMA No. 01/2002. The Working Group's mission is to discuss, evaluate and propose fishery management measures based on proposals for managing the spiny lobster resource.

The Lobster Working Group used statistical information generated by IBAMA's Fisheries Statistics Project and fleet statistics generated by the Ministry of Agriculture to determine the number of licensed and unlicensed vessels that operate in the fishery. The analysis included the number of participants in the fishery and fishing effort levels in terms of number of trips and the trip duration. The results clearly indicated the need to protect the resource from overfishing by reducing excess fishing capacity.

Based on the above the Working Group approved the following fishery management measures:

• To reduce fishing effort from 112 million trap-days to 30 million trap-days in 5 years, implying the removal of about 2 511 vessels from the fishery.

• To manage the lobster resource by administrative areas defined as:

  Area I: Amapá to Ceará;
  Area II: Rio Grande do Norte to Alagoas; and
  Area III: Bahia to Espírito Santo.

• To implement a Certificate of Origin of the Lobster transfers (GOL).

Biology

In 1999, IBAMA implemented a new spiny lobster research programme in five States: Pará, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco and Espírito Santo. This project has generated information about the biology, size composition in the landings and the fishing effort applied on the stocks of lobsters. However, the reduced level of investment in this project has limited the activities originally planned for the project. The research component most affected by funding cuts is that of "puerulus" studies, indispensable for the prediction of recruitment and future production.

Research on the stock units accomplished by the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), with the support of IBAMA and of the production sector identified different genetic groupings regarding Panulirus argus captured in Bahia, Pernambuco, Ceará and Pará. The results indicate the possible existence of two populations of P. argus off the coasts of Brazil: one located from Pernambuco to Bahia and another from Ceará to Pará (Carreiro, 2001).

The author attributes these population structures to the dispersion of larvae under the influence of the subequatorial current bifurcation off the state of Rio Grande do Norte. More refined DNA analyses of the P. argus and P. laevicauda are presently being carried out in Brazil.

Available Data and Recent Developments

In spite of the expansion of the exploitation area and of the fleet, data in Table 1 reveal a stabilization of the lobster landed in the Brazilian fishery during 1997-2001. However, landings in the State of Rio Grande do Norte (RN) show an increasing trend as a result of a significant increase in the number of divers, which is a relatively more efficient catching method. Landings in the State of Ceará (CE) represent 53.4 percent of the Brazilian lobster production.

Table 1. Brazilian lobster yield by State, 1997-2001 (tonnes)

* Based on the yield of 2000.
** Based on the yield of 1998.

The lobster fleets that operated in the fishery prior to 1968 were artisanal and acquired industrial characteristics starting in 1968 when mechanization of the fleet took place. This process reversed starting in the late-1980s due to lower landings per vessel and higher costs of production. The industrial fleets that were previously owned by fishing companies changed property to small and medium-size fishers under the economic support of the same companies but with the commitment of exclusive sale of the catch. This arrangement changed through time and the new vessel owners assumed the operational costs directly. This process significantly contributed to giving the fleet artisanal characteristics. This process became even more significant during the 1991-2001 period when about 1 081 new boats entered the fishery as a consequence of the higher prices paid for lobster and the introduction of gillnets, which are cheaper to acquire and easier to operate from smaller vessels. In the State of Ceará alone, this process represented an increment of 58.4 percent in fleet size. (Table 2; IBAMA, 1995 and 2001).

Table 2. Lobster fleet in State Ceará, Brazil, during 1991, 1994, 1995, 2000 and 2001

Table 3. Brazilian lobster fleet, by type of boat and state, in 2000

Of the 3 760 boats that operated in the fishery in 2000 (most with LOA below 12 m) about 1 707 (45.4%) were sailboats and 2 053 (54.6%) were motorized (Table 3).

Analyses by the Technical Working Group on Lobsters showed that the majority (66.8%) of new vessels were sailboats that did not have fishing permits (only 72 out of 1 707 sailboats had a permit) (Table 4).

Table 4. Legalized and not legalized Brazilian lobster fleets in 2000

Table 5. Fishing effort (million trap-days) applied to Brazilian lobster stocks in 2000

The Technical Working Group on Lobsters also analysed the fishing effort exerted by each fleet type (number of traps, trips/year, number of days fishing, number of fishers, etc.) and estimated that the fishing effort currently applied on the Brazilian lobster stocks is 112 million trap-days, which is 82 million trap-days above the number of trap-days estimated to generate maximum sustainable yield levels (Table 5). It is significant that 49 million trap-days are generated by that part of the fleet that has no fishing permit (Table 6). Fishing effort is more intense in the states of Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba, representing 70.9 percent of the total (Table 6).

Table 6. Fishing effort (million trap-days) applied to Brazilian lobster stocks, by situation of the fleet, in 2000

Status of the National Spiny Lobster Resource

Assessment of the status of exploitation, abundance and recruitment of P. argus was recently completed using the historic database from the Marine Biology Laboratory at UFC (LABOMAR) (Ehrhardt and Rocha, 2002a and 2002b). The database included age structures in the landings, fishing effort, and landings for the years 1970-1997. The stock assessment results indicate high fishing mortality rates, with larger incidence on males, and showing a large variability due mostly to changes in stock abundance (Fig. 1). It is observed that the fishing mortality rates are much higher than the natural mortality rate adopted in the assessments (M = 0.35), which may be indicative of an excess of exploitation being exerted on the stock.

Figure 1. Fishing mortality rates of male and female spiny lobster, Brazil, 1970-1998

Since 1992, there have been increasing trends in fishing mortality rates of males and females. These trends, although not calculated for the period of 1998 to 2002, must have persisted until today due to the fact that the fishing effort increased significantly between 1994 and 2000, from 80 million trap-days to 112 million trap-days, respectively.

The stock abundance in number of lobsters (Fig. 2) shows significant increasing and decreasing trends throughout the history of the fishery. These trends cannot be simply explained by fishing mortality only. In effect, recruitment and recruitment success estimates (Figs. 3 and 4) indicate a large variability in recruitment, which appears to be affected by changes in prevailing winds as a consequence of known ENSO effects on wind patterns in northeastern Brazil. The authors believe that such wind effects on recruitment are the consequence of physical factors that may have affected larval retention mechanisms.

Figure 2. Stock abundance in numbers of male and female spiny lobster, Brazil, 1970-1998

Figure 3. Recruitment of spiny lobster, Brazil 1970-1998

Figure 4. Wind anomaly and recruitment anomaly of spiny lobster, Brazil, 1970-1998

Figure 5. Exploitation patterns of P. argus in Brazil in 1974, 1984 and 1994

The stock assessment report shows that starting in 1993 there is a strong decrease in population abundance, which may be indicative of a current period of lower abundance. Under the condition of current stabilized landings, the lower abundance levels have resulted in increased fishing mortality as observed in Fig. 1. This latter condition is of special concern given the existence of a considerable number of new vessels that entered the fishery, the intensification of the use of gillnets and "cangalha" traps and the increase in the use of scuba and free diving in the fishery. These technological changes represent a large change in the total fishing power of the fleets that still needs to be assessed.

Social and Economic Status and Importance of the Fisheries

Currently, there are 24 fishing companies in Brazil directly involved in the capture, processing and export of lobsters, 18 of which are headquartered in the State of Ceará. These companies are about one half of the industrial park that was installed in 1991 (44 companies).

Until the early 1990s, lobster was the main export product in the State of Ceará generating about $53 million in the year of 1991. Currently, lobsters are ranked 5th among export commodities in the State of Ceará, corresponding to $35 million annually. This drop in exports from Ceará is associated to lower landings in that state, most likely due to depletion of the local stocks. Nationally, however, lobster exports have been $60 million annually for the last five years. This stability is due to the increase in the price paid per kg of lobster tails (Table 7).

Since 1991, the Ministry of Work instituted a safety-and-unemployment insurance programme for the professional fishers. This programme includes workers on board of vessels up to 10 GRT (considered artisanal boats). The insurance is activated during the 4-month closed season. In the year 2001 over 13 590 fishers benefited from this insurance while about 15 000 fishers work in the fishery.

Table 7. Brazilian lobster exports, weight and value, 1997-2001

In 1998 the Ministry of Work generated a socio-economic profile of the beneficiaries of the unemployment law. The fishers interviewed possess the following characteristics: advanced age with a 44 year-old average; low school level, most (88.4%) being illiterate or semi-illiterate; on the average they have being in the fishery for about 28 years; 63.5 percent use gillnet for catching lobsters; they possess low level of family income (average $42/month); and a low level of participation in professional associations (cooperatives, unions, etc.). The level of professional training is extremely low. In spite of the low income, the generally unhealthy living conditions, and the high risks of the activity, 63.8 percent of the fishers do not want to leave this activity (IDT, 1998).

Recommendations

Given the level of exploitation of the spiny lobster resource it increasingly evident that adoption of urgent fishery management measures is required. Among the most salient recommendations are:

• A substantial reduction of the fishing effort that currently is not being properly controlled.

• Development of international agreements with the main spiny lobster importing nations to jointly eliminate the trade of undersized lobsters.

• Development of an educational programme aiming at the general public and resource users regarding the needs of conserving the lobster resource as whole and of the impacts generated by the fishing industry on the resources and its environment.

• Development of a basic education programme to eradicate illiteracy among fishers and their communities.

• Development and funding of an integrated long-range multidisciplinary spiny lobster research programme that considers stock assessment activities and the corresponding data collection, population dynamic studies to understand recruitment variability and reproductive potential of the stock. These activities should encompass the states of Pará, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Bahia and Espírito Santo, by the Fisheries Research Centre of Northern Brazil (CEPNOR) and Fisheries Research Centre of Northeastern Brazil (CEPENE).

References

Carreiro, C.R.P. 2001. Identificação de populações da lagosta vermelha Panulirus argus do Norte e Nordeste do Brasil, usando marcadores moleculares. Dissertação Mestrado, Departamento de Engenharia de Pesca, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza. 65 p.

Castro e Silva, S.M.M. 1998. Pescarias de lagostas no Estado do Ceará: características e rendimentos. Dissertação Mestrado, Departamento de Engenharia de Pesca, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil, 184 p.

Ehrhardt, N.M. & Sobreira Rocha, C.A. 2002. An assessment of the Brazilian spiny lobster, P. argus fishery. Report of a FAO Consultancy.

Ehrhardt, N.M. & Sobreira Rocha, C.A. 2002. Recruitment dynamics of the spiny lobster, P. argus, in Brazil. Submitted to Fishery Bulletin.

IBAMA. 1995. Boletim estatistico da pesca marinha e estuarina do estado do Ceará, nos años de 1991 a 1994. CEPENE, Tamandare.

IBAMA. in press. Boletim estatistico da pesca marinha e estuarina do nordeste do Brasil, no año de 2001. No prelo.

Instituto de Desenvolvimento de Trabalho (IDT). 1998. Pescadores artesanais beneficiários do seguro-desemprego: aspectos socioeconômicos na perspectiva da empregabilidade. Fortaleza: SINE/CE. 57 p.

Sobreira Rocha, C.A.; de Lima Conceição, R.N.; de Almeida Carvalho, R.C. & Negreiros Aragão, J.A. 2001. National report on the spiny lobster fishery in Brazil FAO Fisheries Report No. 619: 179-183.

Ministry = Environmental politics
IBAMA = Execution of the environmental politics
Fishery Directory = Research and management
Protection Directory = Control and inspection
CEPNOR/CEPENE/CEPTA/CEPSUL/CEPERG = Centres of research and management