individuals with access to capital began to
purchase the days (and associated gear
sets) on the different beaches. Today,
these individuals (locally referred to as the
“big sharks”) own most of the canoes and
access days, and have the power to
decide whether or to not invest in multiple
gear sets in order to take advantage of
their days. Typically they choose to own a
couple of canoes/nets and fish on multiple
days with each set. In addition, as owners
also have the power to determine whether
to allow new entrants to the fishery, they
have successfully closed the doors to the
fishery. Some fishers trying to enter the
fishery on Praia Grande reported being
physically threatened by these owners or
by their employees to discourage their
efforts.
Another significant infraction occurring on
Praia Grande and impacting all the seining
beaches is the practice of leaving the
seine in the water unattended. Fishers
from other beaches complain that this net
disrupts the flow of fish upon which all
seiners depend as schools ‘hit’ the net and
then disperse in different directions to
deeper waters. This has created problems
between beaches and fishers from other
beaches commonly complain that Praia
Grande fishing practices are negatively
impacting their activities and that they are
not ‘team players’.
Conservation: Seiners and the
Marine Extractive Reserve
The Arraial do Cabo MER created a three
mile fishing belt around the cape to be
exclusively used and managed by the ‘tra-
ditional’ fishing population of that munici-
pality. The assumption behind this
approach to marine management was that
by creating a restricted use area, gov-
erned by local fishers in collaboration with
the federal environmental agency, small-
scale fishing and the resources these fish-
ers depend on, would be protected from
outside threats – such as the shrimp
trawlers that commonly trawled close to
shore. The ability for the reserve to
achieve its social and conservation objec-
tives therefore rests on the ability of local
fishers to work together and with repre-
sentatives from the federal government to
govern this area.
The MER has the potential for providing
significant usufruct property rights to the
fishers included in the plan as each fisher
was granted a permit allowing them
access to the area for 60 years. Not only
were fishing activities to be managed
through the reserve but any activity that
utilised the area within this three mile belt
had to be approved by the managing
council of the reserve. Other activities
included recreational SCUBA diving, boat
tours to nearby islands and oilrig repairs.
Like other marine parks in Brazil (i.e., the
archipelago of Fernando de Noronha), the
Arraial do Cabo MER can charge user fees
and thus raise funds to support the
reserve.
Soon after the MER was created, a utilisa-
tion plan was developed through a series
of meetings with local fishers, regional
academics and government representa-
tives to define the rules that represent the
social contract among fishers as well as
between fishers and government. The
seiners’ traditional institutions were auto-
matically integrated into the plan. Article
5.1 of the plan states that “beach seining
is permitted according to the norms of the
right of way system that regulates the
canoe sequence”.^19 The reserve, there-
fore, absorbed the existing beach seiners’
common property regime (CPR) and
expanded it to include all the different
gear groups in the municipality.
The MER created a new decision-making
forum, whereby non-owners have the
same vote as owners and hook fishers
History, cculture aand cconservation
