Why are fishers retaining manta and devil ray bycatch?

Increasing fishing pressure, including from small-scale fisheries, has caused declines in more than one-third of all elasmobranch species. Tackling conservation issues in small-scale fisheries requires interdisciplinary approaches due to the coastal community's interdependence on marine resources. To support inclusive policy change and fisher engagement, an understanding of the motivations driving fishers' operational choices (i.e., the retention of elasmobranch bycatch) is needed. We assess the motivational drivers behind bycatch retention of one of the slowest-growing and most vulnerable elasmobranch groups, manta and devil rays (collectively, mobulids), through a case study in India, their largest fishery in the world. We conducted a best-worst scaling survey in the fishery-intensive states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, which make significant contributions to mobulid landings on India's east coast. Our results suggest that fishers exhibit varied motivations for retaining mobulid bycatch across states. Financial motivation to sell mobulids for additional revenue was the most important motivator for bycatch retention in both states. In Tamil Nadu, the top three motivators were all financially driven, whereas in Andhra Pradesh, the top three motivators included both financial and non-financial attributes, such as nutritional importance and storage optimisation. As the first socio-economic study of mobulid fisheries in India, we show that motivations underlying bycatch retention decisions vary geographically and may be influenced by cultural differences between states and the socio-economic characteristics of decision makers. Based on identified fisher motivations, we provide context-specific recommendations to align conservation strategies with the values fishers derive from the mobulid fishery and encourage participation in conservation. These include subsidies for net repair to encourage mobulid release; promotion of a minimum price measure for sustainably sourced alternative species; quality improvement of target species; and increased awareness of national and international regulatory obligations (e.g., CITES, CMS, IOTC).