Interaction of Marine Mammals with Artisanal Fishing Communities El Cuco, Esteron and Icacal, El Salvador

Claudia Esther Ascencio Elizondo

Promote studies in marine mammal’s area for El Salvador, so will benefit not only the conservation but also the fishermen involved.

Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

Marine mammals are studied in most of the countries in the Pacific Eastern Ocean not only because of the great importance they have for the marine ecosystem but also for the interactions with fisheries; El Salvador hasn’t develop the scientific research because requires a lot of funding to manage all necessary investigations, for these reasons it doesn´t count with studies in marine biology and interactions between marine mammals and artisanal fisheries.

Since this problem has been based work to investigate what are the operational interactions between marine mammals present with artisanal fishermen when performing their task. Significantly the behavior that can be derived from the species at the beginning of the interaction and end. Also know the number of specimens in the area. Finally will be analyzed the level of knowledge the fishermen has about these groups of mammals.

By marine mammal’s sightings during artisanal fishermen work will gauge interaction and present behaviour of the animal, also photographs taken to determine which species are those that can be observed in the area and the amount present. The surveys will be crucial to know the level of knowledge possessed by fishermen on these specimens and the attitude they takes when occurs such interaction.

The results will give basis for further work and will be the first official record of sightings of marine mammals in the country, just as on the interaction of marine mammals with artisanal fisheries.

El Salvador does not have any regulation for the conservation of marine mammals, so the result will be given to the authorities in order they create laws to maintain the population of the specimens studied.

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