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Highlights • Archival and interview data reveal historical trends in a data-poor fishery. • Multiple technological and societal transitions occurred over the last century. • The adoption of technology by the recreational sector kept pace with commercial. • Historical sources can contribute to filling knowledge gaps for resource management. Abstract Recreational fishing has taken place for centuries and is a globally popular activity, yet a lack of monitoring data means historical trends in recreational fisheries are often little understood compared to their commercial counterparts. We examined archival sources and conducted fisher interviews to examine changes in the Queensland recreational snapper (Chrysophrys auratus) fishery throughout its documented history. We extracted data spanning the past 140 years on technological innovations, catch rate trends, and social and regulatory change. Technological innovations were evident throughout the history of the recreational fishery. During the 1960s, 1990s and 2000s, several periods of rapid technological transition occurred, where a technology was adopted by >50% of recreational fishers within 10 years of its introduction. Since the 1960s, the timing and rate of adoption of fish-finding technology by recreational fishers has kept pace with the commercial sector. These technological advances have profoundly increased recreational targeting ability, but despite these advances, recalled recreational catch rate trends demonstrated significant declines over the course of the 20th century. While minimum size limits have been imposed on the snapper fishery for over a century, in contrast, the introduction of recreational in-possession limits only commenced in the 1990s. At this time, the beginnings of a societal transition was also observed, where longstanding 'take-all' attitudes towards fishing began to be replaced by a more conservation-minded ethic. This shift was driven in part by the changing regulatory landscape, as well as wider attitudinal change influenced by the media and shifting societal norms, although whether this led to a reduction in total recreational catch remains unclear due to a lack of fishery-wide monitoring data and the open access nature of the recreational fishery. This study demonstrates that in the absence of systematic data collection, archival sources and fisher interviews can contribute an interdisciplinary knowledge base for understanding and interpreting historical fishery trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical baselines are needed to reconstruct long-term changes in marine animal populations and enhance our ability to articulate management recommendations. We reconstructed common angelshark ( Squatina squatina) abundance in the Northern Adriatic Sea over the last two centuries by integrating different sources of formal and informal information. The wide amount of information collected helped assessing if the species is actually extirpated from the area, as stated in previous studies. According to naturalists' accounts and historical documents, in the nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries the species was so abundant to sustain targeted fisheries, and large quantities of S. squatina were sold in the main fish markets. In the 1960s, the species collapsed and got economically extinct. Even if it was never caught in the area through scientific surveys during the period 1948-2014, from fishermen interviews emerged that the species is not extirpated. However, only 50% of interviewees caught S. squatina at least once and they were significantly older than the fishermen that never caught it (shifting baseline syndrome). Moreover, the size of the fish caught significantly decreased through time, indicating the depletion of larger individuals. Our integrated approach can be applied to any poorly assessed species so that appropriate international conservation measures can be prioritized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]