A participatory approach to tagging and monitoring as an initial step in developing a sturgeon conservation strategy along the Turkish Black Sea Coast

Abstract

The objective of this study was to organise a national mechanism that would allow to effectively promote and control the gentle handling and release of accidentally caught sturgeons with the participation of the fishery while at the same time testing the effectiveness of such measures through tagging and continuous monitoring. A second objective was to develop through this exercise a participatory conservation strategy for sturgeons which is jointly executed by the research institutions, governmental agencies and commercial fishery. The samples of Acipenseridae which were captured accidentally in the fishing nets from the commercial fishers were released to sea after tagging with plastic T-bar tag and all the information about the fish species such as fish weight and length, capture locality, depth were recorded. Within these applications, carried out in collaboration with the Fisheries Cooperatives and fishermen in the Black Sea region, 99 fish (9, 22, 48 and 20 for the years 2006-2009, respectively) were tagged and released to the sea. Five of the tagged fish were re-captured and released again after recording the information on the tags.