First assessment of the Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global marine recreational fisheries

• Main Author: Pita, Pablo
• Publication Date: 2021
• Other Authors: Ainsworth, Gillian B., Alba, Bernardino, Anderson, Antônio B., Antelo, Manel, Alós, Josep, Artetxe, Iñaki, Baudrier, Jérôme, Castro, José J., Chicharro, Belén, Erzini, K, Ferter, Keno, Freitas, Mafalda, García-de-la-Fuente, Laura, García-Charton, José A., Giménez-Casalduero, María, Grau, Antoni M., Diogo, Hugo, Gordoa, Ana, Henriques, Filipe, Hyder, Kieran, Jiménez-Alvarado, David, Karachle, Paraskevi K., Lloret, Josep, Laporta, Martin, Lejk, Adam M., Dedeu, Arnau L., Martín-Sosa, Pablo, Martínez, Lllibori, Mira, Antoni M., Morales-Nin, Beatriz, Mugerza, Estanis, Olesen, Hans J., Papadopoulos, Anastasios, Pontes, João, Pascual-Fernández, José J., Purroy, Ariadna, Ramires, Milena, Rangel, Mafalda, Reis-Filho, José Amorim, Sánchez-Lizaso, Jose L., Sandoval, Virginia, Sbragaglia, Valerio, Silva, Luis, Skov, Christian, Sola, Iván, Strehlow, Harry V., Torres, María A., Ustups, Didzis, van der Hammen, Tessa, Veiga, Pedro, Venerus, Leonardo A., Verleye, Thomas, Villasante, Sebastián, Weltersbach, Marc Simon, Zarauz, Lucía
• Format: Article
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/17362
• topic: Fishers’ profiles; Leisure activities; Expert knowledge; Fishery surveys; Virus outbreak

In late 2019, an outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus started in China (Graham and Baric, 2020; Hu et al., 2020; Maxmen, 2021). A global pandemic was declared in March 2020, as COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus (World Health Organization, 2020b), escalated outside China (World Health Organization, 2020a). In mid-2021, when vaccination campaigns began to show positive effects on the control of the disease in several countries (Kaur and Gupta, 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic caused millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of infections (Dong et al., 2020). To fight the pandemic, governments reacted with measures designed to contain the spread of the virus, especially through measures aimed to reduce social interactions, including lockdowns (Wilder-Smith and Freedman, 2020), travel restrictions (Chinazzi et al., 2020), and limiting people’s access to non-essential activities (Storr et al., 2021). Humanity suffered a notable impact as a result of the pandemic, including losses of jobs and an abrupt disruption in global demand of goods and services (Barua, 2020; McKibbin and Fernando, 2020; Nicola et al., 2020). The pandemic further degraded the quality of life of the most vulnerable people, particularly those with mental health problems (Brooks et al., 2020), victims of domestic violence (Usher et al., 2020), children (Singh et al., 2020), or indigenous populations (Lane, 2020). As a result, an increase in economic inequality and worldwide poverty is expected, especially in developing countries (World Bank, 2020), and a peak in the suicide rate (Kawohl and Nordt, 2020). On the other hand, global reduction of human activities has had some positive effects on the global environment, especially for air and water quality (Rutz et al., 2020), and noise reduction (Zambrano-Monserrate et al., 2020). Marine ecosystems for example experienced less impacts derived from commercial fishing due to disruptions in large markets such as the United States (White et al., 2021a) or the European Union (Prellezo and Carvahlo, 2020; Coll et al., 2021).