About

Our program addresses fish and fisheries conservation problems by adopting an interdisciplinary approach that places fish populations in a broad context that is ecosystem-based, includes humans, and focuses on policy.

Research topics

• Geography
• Ecology
• Fishery
• Biology
• Environmental science
• Computer Science
• Agroforestry
• Environmental resource management
• Environmental protection

Selected publications

• Reliability of Recalls of Catch Rates In the Short Past

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Assessing social–ecological feedbacks in small-scale fisheries

  AMBIO · 2026-05-14

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Assessment frameworks do not capture the complexity of the social-ecological dynamics of small-scale fisheries (SSF), which support millions of livelihoods yet face persistent sustainability challenges. Reciprocal feedbacks between fish populations and fishers that are central to sustainability remain insufficiently integrated into assessment approaches because conventional fisheries management emphasizes population dynamics, whereas social-ecological systems research focuses on social drivers and faces operational challenges. We propose an integrative diagnostic approach that explicitly links fish population dynamics with theories of fisher behavior and governance. We illustrate its application using co-managed arapaima fisheries in the Amazon Basin, where sustainability emerges from multi-scalar social and ecological interactions. By capturing these feedbacks, the approach bridges ecological and social dimensions to identify key drivers of sustainability. It provides a replicable, interdisciplinary framework for diagnosing SSF sustainability and identifying leverage points to support adaptive governance across diverse contexts.

  PublisherDOI

• Amazon dredging law exposes governance gaps

  Science · 2026-05-14

  articleOpen access

  Amazon dredging law exposes governance gapsA recent federal decree authorizing large-scale water resources development in the Amazon exposed weaknesses in Brazil's governance of the world's largest river basin (1).Passed in August, 2025, Federal Decree 12.600/2025 opened stretches of the Madeira, Tapajs, and Tocantins rivers to private dredging and waterway expansion under Brazil's National Privatization Program (2).Indigenous communities and civil society organizations argued that the decree advanced without adequate consultation under ILO Convention 169 or environmental assessment, raising concerns about violations of constitutionally protected rights (3).The decree also threatened to modify more than 3700 km of river channels, increasing turbidity and degrading habitats fundamental to biodiversity, fisheries, and regional food security (2,(4)(5)(6).Amid mounting collective mobilization and public political pressure, President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva revoked the decree in February (7).To prevent similar decrees from passing in the future, Brazil should implement and enforce better protection of its rivers.The initial passage of Federal Decree 12.600/2025 reveals a structural problem: Brazil's regulatory framework treats rivers primarily as economic infrastructure.Interventions proceed through licensing that assesses projects in isolation, whereas cumulative basinwide impacts are largely neglected.However, rivers are interconnected social-ecological systems that sustain biodiversity and cultural identity (8).Waterways play a particularly important role in the Amazon, where nature and people's livelihoods depend intimately on rivers and their seasonal flood pulses (9).The presidential reversal of the Federal Decree 12.600/2025 is not an adequate substitute for durable legal safeguards.Brazil should adopt a national legal framework recognizing major rivers as rights-bearing entities.Granting legal standing to rivers would enable representation in court and require environmental licensing to address basin-level impacts rather than projects in isolation.Embedding these principles into federal law would reduce reliance on case-by-case political intervention.Subnational legislation in Minas Gerais demonstrates that enhanced legal status for rivers can be incorporated within Brazil's legal system (10).Supported by sustained civic engagement (11,12), national reform could extend enforceable protections to major Amazonian rivers and provide a model for other biodiverse basins facing infrastructure expansion.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Accounting for unreported harvest in fisheries with diverse social dynamics

  Ecosphere · 2026-05-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Fisheries are coupled social and ecological systems that exemplify the challenges arising from the intricate dynamics and feedback loops between human behavior and the natural environment. Assessments of the status of a fishery rely on data on fish population variability over time and estimates of harvest rate and reported catch. These models are used to understand the regulatory mechanisms underlying the relationship between fishing and population productivity. However, when fishing activity is illegal, unreported, and/or unregulated (IUU), such models can underestimate the vulnerability of fish stocks to collapse. There is a need, therefore, to develop general methods to incorporate information about human decisions regarding when and how much to fish, and compliance with reporting and fishing regulations into population assessments. Here, we propose and assess a novel approach to model population demography of a fished population, incorporating ecological estimates of natural mortality, population censuses, and catch data. We describe the ways in which knowledge of social dynamics in different types of fisheries can inform estimates of reported and unreported fishing in our modeling framework. We consider four alternative modeling parameterizations that reflect real‐world scenarios for which the degree of unreported fishing and the relationship between reporting rate and fish abundance varies. We show that, in some cases, ignoring IUU fishing can severely bias estimates of vital rates and population dynamics. Using prior knowledge of how fishing and reporting change with fish abundance can inform estimates of IUU in model formulations and improve their predictive accuracy.

  PublisherDOI

• Applying food systems thinking in recreational fisheries: The case of shore fishing in Detroit, Michigan

  Marine Policy · 2026-04-15

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Collaborative research networks as a strategy to synthesize knowledge of Amazonian biodiversity"

  2025-08-11

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Collaborative research networks as a strategy to synthesize knowledge of Amazonian biodiversity

  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2025-11-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  The Amazon region is critical for maintaining global biodiversity and mitigating climate change; however, it faces escalating threats from deforestation and habitat degradation. Addressing these threats requires evidence-based strategies grounded in investments in science, technology, innovation and collaborative research. The Brazilian National Institute of Science and Technology (INCT) programme plays a central role in advancing scientific and technological progress by establishing collaborative research networks across diverse fields and regions. In this context, we present the INCT in Synthesis of Amazonian Biodiversity (INCT-SynBiAm) as a case study, illustrating how research networks can promote diversity in academia and enhance our understanding of biodiversity in hyperdiverse tropical regions. The SynBiAm network integrates 47 academic and non-academic institutions from Brazil and abroad. Its key objectives are to establish and expand a collaborative initiative for research synthesis in Amazonia, deepen our understanding of biodiversity patterns, threats and drivers in forest and freshwater ecosystems, inform environmental and educational practices and policies, and train future educators, decision-makers and scientists committed to the Amazon's conservation and sustainability. We outline the INCT programme and demonstrate how the INCT-SynBiAm network can achieve these goals, providing a model for future collaborative initiatives aimed at addressing socio-ecological challenges in tropical regions.

  PublisherDOI

• Provisioning fisheries: A framework for recognizing the fuzzy boundary around commercial, subsistence, and recreational fisheries

  Fisheries · 2025-02-10 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Although sparse, increasing evidence suggests an overlooked population of fishers whose fishing motivations and outcomes overlap across commercial, subsistence and recreational fishing sectors, resulting in underrepresented groups of fishers in management and policy frameworks. These fishers participate in what we frame as “provisioning fisheries,” a concept we propose to highlight the underrepresented values from fishing and fisheries across recreational, sociocultural, psychological, economic, health, and nutritional dimensions. We argue that provisioning fisheries often support underserved groups, provisioning fishers may engage in informal markets, and, that distinction exists from sport-oriented recreational fisheries in power, risks, access barriers, fishing motivation, attitudes, and practices including rule and advisory awareness. We propose that provisioning fisheries should be consciously considered—whether as part of existing fisheries structures or even its own sector to promote more sustainable and inclusive fisheries management. Overlooking this population of fishers may risk further marginalization, conflicts, contaminant exposure, and inaccurate stock estimates. Therefore, we propose provisioning fisheries as a useful analytical category to explore the heterogeneity of fishers and their distinct needs, motivations, and behaviors. As an example of how these fisheries may function, we synthesize what we currently know about provisioning fisheries in North America with hypothesized differences between provisioning and the sport-oriented recreational fisher to encourage greater dialogue and investigation about underrecognized fisheries.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A guide to succeed in graduate school

  Fisheries · 2025-11-17

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Comanagement and reconciling of ecological and economic benefits in an Amazonian freshwater fishery

  Conservation Biology · 2025-05-30 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Freshwater ecosystems contribute substantially to the global fish catch. However, freshwater fisheries face growing human pressures and are underrepresented in global analyses and conservation strategies. Attempts to reconcile conservation and human welfare goals in fisheries have led to comanagement by the government and local communities, along with other stakeholders, but assessments of its effectiveness in freshwater fisheries are lacking. We investigated the effectiveness of comanagement in freshwater fisheries by assessing ecological (fish catch) and economic (fishing revenue) outcomes in a major tributary of the Amazon Basin. Fisheries comanagement in the Amazon is typically implemented through an approach developed by riverine communities called lake management in which floodplain lakes are categorized as open access, subsistence, or protected. Each category has different levels and types of fishing pressure. We analyzed data (e.g., fishing data and management rules) from 1607 fishing trips of 198 fishers over 5 years in 30 riverine communities in 74 floodplain lakes (20 open access, 33 subsistence, and 21 protected). Lake comanagement increased fish catch in protected lakes over time by 12% (2.4 kg) compared with subsistence lakes and by 13% (2.6 kg) compared with open-access lakes (p = 0.03). Increased fish catch in protected lakes was mainly due to limits on fishing effort. Fishing revenue was 63% greater in protected lakes than in open-access lakes (p < 0.001), mainly due to increased harvests of species that had small to medium home ranges and were amenable to management at the small geographical areas of these community initiatives. These results show how one locally developed approach to comanagement can reconcile ecological and socioeconomic benefits and provide policy-relevant evidence that can serve as models to foster freshwater conservation elsewhere.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Balancing BiOdiversity CoNservation with Development in Amazon WetlandS

  NSF · $90k · 2019–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Fabrice Duponchelle

  Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

  27 shared

• Caroline C. Arantes

  24 shared

• Donald J. Stewart

  SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

  23 shared

• Carlos Edwar de Carvalho Freitas

  Universidade Federal do Amazonas

  14 shared

• Érika Berenguer

  University of Oxford

  13 shared

• Angélica Faria de Resende

  University of Stirling

  12 shared

• Victoria Isaac

  Universidade Federal do Pará

  12 shared

• David McGrath

  Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará

  12 shared

Labs

• Leandro Castello LabPI

  The ecology and conservation of fish and fisheries with aims to improving societal capacity to solve the problems of tropical fisheries