MPAs are established with the main purpose of protecting and preserving habitats and species. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to manage the human activities that insist on the natural heritage and thus seek a compromise between protection and enjoyment.
Management challenges are often very difficult at MPAs, and require a constant dialogue and involvement with the stakeholders in the area. An effective way to collaborate with stakeholders is to involve them in monitoring activities, particularly those related to climate change, so that they can become aware of the changes that are taking place under their eyes, but which are often not so visible!
In Portofino Marine Protected Area, the main stakeholders involved in monitoring activities are fishermen, both professional and recreational, as well as divers.
Fishermen supporting data collection
On the one hand, professional fishermen of Portofino MPA contribute to data collection in different ways:
Photo credit: The specimen of Caranx cryosis caught in Camogli in 2018, by Lorenzo Merotto.
providing data on landings to MPA staff directly on board or through logbooks;
- reporting strange and unusual species – in example, in October 2018 two elderly fishermen from Camogli recognised, among hundreds of amberjacks caught, a strange fish. It was later revealed to be a Caranx cryosis, being the first report of the species in the Ligurian Sea!
- implementing historical catch data sets, including those of historical fishing methods such as the Tonnarella di Camogli. In this case it was possible to obtain information on the species that characterise the fish fauna present in the MPA, including the pelagic ones, which are difficult to monitor with other methods.
- witness the changes occurring in the fish fauna, as representatives of the historical memory of a place. These changes can be transposed into scientific data thanks to the Local Ecological Knowledge protocol.
On the other hand, whilst fishermen can provide important data on fish fauna, divers can provide live observations on multiple aspects and phenomena, from the presence of new species to mass die-offs.
Divers as observers of change
In the past, recreational divers have been the first to report the presence of new species. In example, this happened in 2017 when an underwater photographer first documented a specimen of Percnon gibbesi in the waters of Portofino MPA. Likewise, divers were the ones that reported unusual phenomena such as the death of Dusky grouper (E. marginatus) due to encephalopathy.
Nonetheless, thanks to the monitoring protocols designed for citizen science, recreational divers can go even further and systematically collect data. In example, data on fish populations can be collected using underwater visual censuses as well as on mass mortality of benthic organisms (such as P. clavata in primis).
Photo credit: Citizen science activity in Portofino MPA, by A.Grasso.
In the case of Portofino Marine Protected Area, where the number of staff managing the MPA is not large, having dozens of trained divers that are able to collect data correctly is a huge contribution. This way, thanks to the training programme initiated with the MPAEngage project and that will continue to be transferred to other MPAs through MPA4Change, a group of volunteer divers has been established in Portofino who regularly collect very important data during their dives.
These data, together with those collected by the fishermen, are not only essential for monitoring the effects of climate change in real time, but can also be used to adapt the management measures of the MPA.
Find more information on this and other protocols for climate change adaptation available in the capacity building page of this website.
