ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Conservation and Sustainability
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1589076
Environmental drivers of shrimp abundance: comparing insights from local ecological knowledge and empirical modeling
Provisionally accepted
- 1East Carolina University, Greenville, United States
- 2Avantgride Renewables, Portland, United States
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The relationship between environmental parameters and the abundance, distribution, phenology and timing of the reproductive cycles in marine organisms is often not well understood. Our study explores the impact of environmental variables on two commercial shrimp populations, brown and white shrimp in North Carolina using insights from local ecological knowledge (LEK) from a survey among commercial shrimp fishers and a set of quantitative population models that were developed from a long-term biological dataset. We find multiple overlaps between fishers' observations and model outputs on the impacts of wind, storms, temperature, rainfall and offshore reproduction, indicating that models and fishers' observations coincide for a range of environmental drivers. We further find that fishers mainly rely on their own experience and other fishers to learn about shrimp abundance and rely less on information provided by fishery managers. Knowledge seeking behavior was related to fishing experience, the role fishers play in the fishery and the number of household members engaged in fishing.We also discuss challenges of comparing LEK data collected from fishers with modeling outputs including potential differences in temporal and spatial scales.
Keywords: Fisheries, Environmental drivers, shrimp, Information sharing, lek
Received: 06 Mar 2025; Accepted: 25 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Heck, Schlenker, Farquhar and Morley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nadine Heck, East Carolina University, Greenville, United States
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