Globally, there has been an increase in wildlife protection—particularly of charismatic species, such as marine mammals. The populations of many marine mammals remain of critical concern after centuries of exploitation and hunting. However, some marine mammal populations (e.g. sea lions) have responded well to protection and show signs of recovery. Interactions between these ‘conservation successes’ and fisheries—particularly small-scale fisheries—is once again of concern globally. In Chile and Peru, two of the world’s biggest fishing nations, there is escalating conflict between small-scale fishers and South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens), which are a protected species. Sea lions depredate fishers’ catch and heavily damage fishing gear. In response to these losses, there is evidence that fishers poison or shoot sea lions—directly impacting sea lion population dynamics. Our aim in this research was to identify the key drivers behind fishers’ conflict with sea lions, and learn what fishers perceive are the best management solutions to this conflict. We surveyed 301 gill net fishers and assessed perceptions using a best-worst scaling (BWS) methodology. BWS is a form of discrete choice experiment in which respondents choose the most important (best) or least important (worst) item from a list.
Results/Conclusions
We find that fishers are chiefly concerned with increases in sea lion populations, perceive that their interactions with sea lions have significantly increased over the past 80 years, and report sea lion-driven catch and income losses of ≥ 26 per cent. Fishers do not believe that compensation schemes will resolve this issue—instead they overwhelmingly call for sea lion population culls. The reported number of sea lions illegally killed by fishers suggests the potential for large negative impacts on these protected species, and a loss of legitimacy for marine conservation regulations. I will discuss the ramifications of these findings for ongoing management of marine human wildlife conflict.