They extract fewer kilograms per day than those who work on boats but work

for a longer period. The professionals׳ strategy is extracting as much as possible during the high season to get the most benefit. The divergence in gooseneck barnacle fishing strategies GSK126 causes competing interests among the groups, which were put forth in the focus groups. The professionals seek a shorter fishing season that adapts to their needs, no more than 3 months. On the contrary, the autonomous group is interested in year-round exploitation. In these circumstances it is up the government agency to mediate terms that will be beneficial for both parties, such as a 7-month campaign. The co-management system is ideal in these situations, since in a community management system these disagreements would be hard to mediate without an objective external agent and in an exclusively government APO866 managed system the implications of the disagreements would not be fully understood. Co-management systems allow for the incorporation of adaptive management into the guidelines. In the gooseneck barnacle fishery, which displays a high level of heterogeneity in the resource (Table 1; Fig. 1 and Fig. 3) and in resource users (see preceding section),

stakeholders agree that the flexibility of the system has been key in its performance. Constant modifications have been done throughout the 20-year history of the plan (Table 2). One example is the length of the fishing season. It is discussed before each campaign and will only be modified if there is a unanimous consensus in the entire plan and the DGPM. For example, during the Prestige oil spill the Cudillero-Oviñana and Cabo RVX-208 Peñas plans had an early closure of the fishing

season to avoid any possible contamination in the resource. There have also been a couple of successful attempts to close the fishing season a few months ahead of time in certain cofradías ( Table 2). The fine-scale in which the plan is organized has been ideal for the implementation of its adaptive management regime. Fishers׳ knowledge has led to a detailed fragmentation of the management units (Section 3.2) unique to collaborative systems, which coincides with the small-scale dispersal (tens of km) of gooseneck barnacle larvae in the Cantabrian Sea [31]. Before each campaign the cofradías and the DPGM determine where a fishing closure would be beneficial, with a level of detail down to 3 m ( Table 2). The decision on what ban to apply to each zone depends on the status of the rock during the past campaign, information that relies mainly on fishers׳ knowledge. The different management strategies for each zone require continuous and adaptive management as well as detailed up to date information on each zone. This can be observed in Fig. 5 where the trends for 3 different zones are represented, these are Cabo Cebes, Maste and Picones.