Artisanal fishers can be almost as accurate as satellite data when it comes to their awareness of features that can be found in the marine environment, a new study has shown.
Published in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management, the research set out to establish the value of local ecological knowledge (LEK) and its ability to generate high quality habitat maps around five Greek islands in the eastern Aegean Sea.
Ten fishermen, based on their individual experience and knowledge, were asked to pinpoint areas where they believed seagrass beds could be found along the coastlines of their respective islands.
The maps they produced were then compared with satellite data of the same regions, with analysis showing an average accuracy of 78% - and a high of 92%.
The fishermen's maps were also 11% more accurate than those used by the Greek government in the development of environmental policies, with more than half of the government maps underestimating the scale of seagrass beds found across the region.
The researchers say their findings are a clear demonstration of the value of tapping into local knowledge, and how doing so can be a low-cost means of generating environmental data without compromising the high accuracy needed for the data to be still valuable for policy use.
The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Plymouth and the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation. They worked closely with fishermen on the islands of Fourni, Arki, Patmos, Lipsi and Leros, each of which are home to communities made up largely of small artisanal fishing vessels.
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