Fishermen’s perception of interactions between fisheries and cetaceans in the Bulgarian Black Sea area

The eastern part of Bulgaria entirely borders the Black Sea, which defines it as a maritime country. The Bulgarian coast is an important fishing region for local people and has a high potential for interactions between fisheries and cetaceans. Depredation caused by cetaceans and damage to fishing gears can potentially lead to substantial economic loss for fishermen, while cetacean bycatch raises conservation concerns. Over the period 2016 - 2019, we conducted face-to-face interviews with fishermen in local fishing areas to better understand the fisheries – cetacean interactions in the Bulgarian part of the Black Sea. The research objectives were to identify the current fishermen’s attitudes toward cetaceans, understand the damage caused by local marine mammals to the different types of fishing gear, and gather fishermen’s proposals to resolve the problems. To record all of this, a specially designed structured survey was conducted. The results showed that fishermen’s attitude towards cetaceans was mostly positive and was not influenced by the type of fishing gear used. We found that fisheries - cetacean interactions are frequent, especially with dalyans gear and set gillnets. Cetacean bycatch mortality was reported to be highest for set gillnets, and the most vulnerable species was the Phocoena phocoena. Although interview data may be biased due to differences in perceptions and experience of the interviewees, and therefore should be interpreted with caution, this method allowed us to cover multiple types of interactions between cetaceans and Bulgarian fisheries.