Um estudo do sistema sócio-ecológico pesqueiro da Ponta do Corumbau, BA

Abstract

Extractive Reserves are an important form of associating the conservation of the natural environment to the maintenance of the related artisanal culture. Besides, local knowledge and practice on the ecological systems are decisive factors for the conservation of both biological and cultural diversity. Here we studied artisanal fishermen from Ponta do Corumbau community, in Bahia/Brazil which is part of the Corumbau Marine Extractive Reserve , created in 2000, to contribute with the execution/implementation of the Reserve Management Plan. The data were obtained through socioeconomic questionnaires applied to 19 fishermen families in 2004 by the team of the Laboratory of Human Ecology and Ethnoecology (LEHE), of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and in two other field surveys (on February 2005 and April 2006when we carried out free and semi-structured interviews, photographic documentation and direct observation, field diary, participation of occasional meetings and informal talks. In Chapter 1, we characterize the artisanal fishermen and the community, the fishing activity and the elaboration of a genealogical tree showing the kinship relation among individuals. The artisanal fishermen are on average 37 years old; 91,4% are male and 8,6% female; 8,6% use sailing canoe, 74,3% motorized boat and 17,1% don't possess any boat; the residences are made of masonry. The main fishing techniques used are the fishing line, shrimp dragnet (called balão ) and the cassoeiro (a kind of gillnet), where the fishing line is the most common technique used. They sell the fresh fish to a cold storage and to two smokers located in the community. In Chapter 2, we approached some aspects of the fishing culture through a visual ethnography, examples include the types of existent boats, the shrimp processing and commercialization, the small fish processing, which comes from the shrimp drag-net, and the fishing line. In Chapter 3, we tried to understand the local practices of the fishermen community. That indicate their adaptation capacity to the present changes in the social-ecological fishing system. The results were interpreted through theories on resilence, adaptative cycles, local knowledge and common property. The obtained information allowed to identify three phases in the dynamics of the socialecological system studied: explotation, subdivided in a first exploratory phase (phase I), represented by canoe fishing before 1990; a phase when local fishermen notice larger disturbance in the fishing system, represented by shrimp capture using drag-nets (balão fishing), intensified between 1990-2000; a reorganization phase represented by the creation of Extractive Reserve, which occurred between 2000 and 2002, and the current exploratory phase (phase II) represented by the application of the Extractive Reserve Management Plan. Those different phases are characterized by elements that strengthen or weaken the resilience of the studied system, and the better knowledge of their dynamics can be useful for the establishment of the shared resources management.