Using expert knowledge to propose recreational marine reef-fish management measures in Chile

Marine recreational fisheries often lack necessary information to perform assessments and develop sustainable management strategies. In Chile, although reef-fish fisheries have been signaled as overexploited, there are still no commercial or recreational regulations regarding bans, catch limits, or size limits. We implemented an expert elicitation protocol to propose management measures to regulate recreational reef-fish harvests of 17 reef-fish species. Sixteen experts estimated minimum legal sizes, temporal closures, and maximum number of individuals harvested per person per trip (known as “bag limits”). Experts also prioritized management measures for each of 17 reef-fish species. Maximum number of individuals harvested per person per trip varied between 1 and 7. In addition, permanent bans were recommended for some species, such as acha (Medialuna ancietae), pejeperro (Semicossyphus darwini), and San Pedro (Oplegnathus insignis). We concluded that information gathered through expert elicitation can play a key role to inform data-poor recreational fishery management. Expert elicitation protocols that include iterative process, based on individual estimates and an open expert discussion phase, provide the necessary enabling environment to identify a variety of management measures. While future challenges include the development of mechanisms to promote acceptability and compliance for recreational fisheries management, the approach presented here is important to initiate much needed discussions.