COVID-19 pandemic impacts on global inland fisheries

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to environmental recovery in some ecosystems from a global "anthropause," yet such evidence for natural resources with extraction or production value (e.g., fisheries) is limited. This brief report provides a data-driven global snapshot of expert-perceived impacts of COVID-19 on inland fisheries. We distributed an online survey assessing perceptions of inland fishery pressures in June and July 2020 to basin-level inland fishery experts (i.e., identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations across the global North and South); 437 respondents from 79 countries addressed 93 unique hydrological basins, accounting for 82.1% of global inland fish catch. Based on the responses analyzed against extrinsic fish catch and human development index data, pandemic impacts on inland fisheries 1) add gradation to the largely positive environmental narrative of the global pandemic and 2) identify that basins of higher provisioning value are perceived to experience greater fishery pressures but may have limited compensatory capacity to mitigate COVID-19 impacts along with negative pressures already present.

Keywords: coronavirus; food security; freshwater fish; livelihoods; recreation.

Fig. 1.

Perceived inland fisheries responses to COVID-19, where responses (n = 359, excludes nongeolocated responses) and major basins account for 82% and 95% of global inland fish catch, respectively.

Fig. 2.

Perceived COVID-19 pressure responses (n = 232, excludes responses outside major basins, without HDI data, and nongeolocated) related to (A) mean normalized HDI and global fish catch and (B) provisioning ecosystem service value index (percent global inland fish catch/HDI), where high index values capture high catch and/or low HDI.