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Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Biology is the property of Instituto Internacional de Ecologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Oceanography is the property of Instituto Oceanografico da Universidade de Sao Paulo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Studies on fishers’ ecological knowledge (FEK) and local ecological knowledge (LEK) have rarely been undertaken for practical application in a management context. Here, we describe a methodology to access FEK that was designed under an ecosystem-based fisheries management framework. The procedure was adapted from the Delphi technique, which seeks experts’ consensus, and focused on several spatial and temporal issues related to the small-scale fisheries of the northern coast of São Paulo, Brazil (particularly, in Ubatuba, between 23°20′ S and 23°35′ S). Experienced fishers, considered as experts, were selected during a pilot phase to participate in two sequential rounds of semi-structured interviews at 3 main landing sites and 12 coastal fishing communities. The issues addressed were: (1) spatial and seasonal occurrence of mature females and juveniles of the main commercial species, (2) fishing grounds and bycatch species for each type of fishing gear, and (3) fishers’ suggestions for local fisheries management (e.g. mesh and size of gillnets, closure seasons, gear restrictions by fishing area). It was possible to identify consensus rates on the spatial and temporal issues, as well as on fishers’ management suggestions. The former allowed the construction of maps representing fishing grounds and the local spatial distribution of different fishery stocks strata. We illustrate the output by focusing on five fishery stocks: the seabob-shrimp Xiphopenaeus kroyeri, the whitemouth croaker Micropogonias furnieri, the inshore squid Loligo spp, the white shrimp Litopenaeus schimitti and the blue runner Caranx crysos. Overall, the results provided new guidelines for future local fisheries management and conservation initiatives. The methodology proved to be useful for the definition of essential fish habitats (EFHs), suggesting their potential application in other locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of information on the daily activity patterns of Litopenaeus vannamei (Boone 1931) might result in inadequate feed management strategies in shrimp farms. In order to provide information to improve feed management in shrimp farms, the daily activity of juvenile shrimp reared in glass aquaria was studied, using L. vannamei (7.57±1.01 g), equivalent to 33 shrimp m−2. Thirty-two shrimp were observed, half in light and half in dark phase, over 280 h in 15 min h−1 windows. Feed was provided once a day, at 10% of tank biomass. Swimming, exploration of substrate, inactivity and cleaning were recorded through instantaneous focal sampling. During the dark phase, swimming was predominant and alternated with exploration. In the light phase, inactivity was predominant, and again alternated with exploration. Cleaning occurred evenly in both the light and the dark. Substrate exploration, which characterizes the search for food, occurred in both dark and light phases, with a most intense peak 7 h after light phase onset, indicating this as the optimal feed offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The population structure of the only Litopenaeus species occurring in Brazilian waters, the white shrimp L. schmitti, was surveyed by screening six microsatellite loci. High diversity ( HE = 0.863; average number of alleles per locus = 37.8) was found across eight geographical locations (2°S to 27°S). Estimates of overall FST (0.0060) were low but significantly different from zero ( P<0.05). FST pairwise estimates and amova revealed a significant discontinuity around a major biogeographical boundary, near Cabo Frio, at 23°S. This separation may have been caused either by historical or on-going hydrogeographical and/or selective factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors comment on a study by Mouriño et al. in which the first record in Brazil of the filamentous bacteria Flexibacter maritimus from the hatching of the post-larvae of Litopenaeus vannamei was reported. According to the authors, only 13 biochemical assays were done to propose Tenacibaculum maritimum as the cause of massive mortality of L. vannamei post-larvae. They assert that despite the potential of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection, the researchers did not do such.