Abstract Title: COVID-19 pandemic impacts on global inland fisheries, fishers, and fish catch

Abstract Submitted to: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Abstract Text:

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has far reaching global health and economic impacts, but the effects on extractive natural resources (e.g., fisheries) linked to livelihoods and provisioning ecosystem services remain less clear. This study provides a global snapshot of expert-perceived impacts of COVID-19 on inland fisheries and their relationship to reported fish catch. An online survey of fisheries professionals distributed in June 2020 yielded 438 responses from 79 countries and 93 unique hydrological basins. Based on the results: 1) impacts of COVID-19 on inland fisheries are variable but spatially concordant and 2) increased pressure from COVID-19 associated with areas of higher fish catch reveal socioeconomic complexities and food security implications. The inference of this study is that the social capital and compensatory capacity of developed countries may result in fewer negative effects of COVID-19 on recreational inland fisheries, while developing countries more heavily dependent on food inland fisheries may not be as resilient to mitigate COVID-19 impacts in addition to negative pressures already present.