부산대학교 도서관

Estuaries and coastal forests, including the coastal fisheries they support, are among the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. In Southern Puerto Rico (SPR), there is a culturally significant emic category of estuarine/coastal forest resource utilization known as "Pesca de monte" (tropical coastal forest fisheries, TCF fisheries hereafter) that constitute a parallel activity to commercial fisheries underreported in fishery statistics. Our three years of field research revealed that SPR communities derive considerable value from TCF resources, showing multiple engagements with these environments and wide-spectrum resource dependency. The value generated by TCF use includes the social and cultural acts of production and exchange in households, neighborhoods, and communities, whether the resources are sold, bartered, given as gifts, or consumed directly. Coastal policy that fails to protect productive TCF landscapes or hinders community access to these resources risks degrading human well-being around the coast. We discuss the implication of our findings for coastal policy in TCF fishery dependent regions such as SPR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]