The research process and communication of results: lessons learned from a multidisciplinary analysis of a tropical small-scale fishery

Abstract

Along with an increase of their relative share of the total world catch, most tropical countries have experienced in the last decades an expansion of their fisheries research activities. These activities, whether based solely on the funding of national institutions, or on international institutions, multilateral or bilateral cooperative projects, have produced noticeable insights into the nature of the factors which determine fishery yields in the tropics. Yet, the complex nature of the fisheries resources and the overall scar¬city of the human resources that have been devoted to applied fisheries research are such that large gaps in our understanding remain concerning tropical fisheries and their management.