Address

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Type

Academic

Website

http://feme-group.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html

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Activities

The Fishing Ecology Management and Economics Group (FEME) is interested in exploring the interactions between ecosystem uses, specifically fisheries, and human societies from developing countries. Our main goal is to provide sound basis for fisheries management without compromising the livelihood of those who depend directly or indirectly on fisheries. This is not always an easy task, given the cultural, social and economic relevance of fisheries, especially the small-scale ones, for countries such as Brazil. Often, best biological management measures need to be adapted to fit social needs. We struggle to find an optimal point, where long-term impact to biodiversity and short-term losses to fishing groups are minimum. To do that, we focus on:

- Fishermen's behavior and decision-making process;
- Socioecological resilience of fishing places;
- Economic evaluation of natural resources;
- Spatial distribution of biological resources;
- Integrated biological and socioeconomic models.

Our group is based in Natal, a coastal city in the Brazilian northeast, within the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Here, we help to form students, we cooperate with the government in initiatives, such as the assessment of conservation status of different species, and we provide consultancy to different private and public companies assessing, for example, past and current impacts of development initiatives on fisheries.