A new study in Peru and Ecuador has found that artisanal fishers are losing revenue due to prolific plastic pollution in the ocean.
Researchers surveyed 1,349 artisanal fishers in Ecuador and Peru and found that the more waste generated locally, the greater the financial losses.
This is reflected in the national economy, with losses in Ecuador and Peru’s domestic product from fisheries.
The study is part of the Pacific Plastic: Science to Solutions initiative, which is represented on an intergovernmental committee currently negotiating a treaty on plastic pollution.
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Plastic waste is increasingly causing problems for fishers. Fishnets bring up bottles, propellers get tangled in bags, water pumps get clogged with debris, and boats collide with bags of trash. Until recently, research on plastics in the oceans has focused on the impacts on biodiversity, but a group of scientists has now studied the economic losses suffered by artisanal fishers in Ecuador and Peru.
“We consistently saw that in statistical terms there is a negative association between plastic pollution and fishers’ earnings,” says Jorge Ávila-Santamaría, an economics professor at San Francisco de Quito University (USFQ) and co-author of a newly published study in the journal Marine Policy.
Part of a campaign by Greenpeace in 2024 to highlight the marine plastic waste crisis. The sign reads “Is this yours?” Image courtesy of Martin Katz/Greenpeace.
The study found that fishers who run into plastic waste more often earn less, are less likely to make a basic wage, and have a lower sense of well-being than those who fish in cleaner waters.
“There is currently no consensus on the real cost of marine plastic waste in the world because there is no standard methodology to measure it,” says study lead author Pablo Llerena, a researcher at USFQ. The new study is one of the first in Latin America to estimate the direct economic losses caused by ocean pollution.
A total of 1,349 Ecuadorian and Peruvian fishers participated in the survey carried out by experts. Image courtesy of USFQ.
About half the 1,349 fishers interviewed for the study in Ecuador and Peru said they had experienced incidents with plastic waste while fishing. Of these, 49% of Ecuadorian fishers and 34% of Peruvian fishers reported losses. For 2021 and 2022, the average loss per fisher was $569 in Ecuador and $669 in Peru.
During the study period, the Ecuadorian artisanal fishing sector lost close to $84 million to plastic waste problems, while in Peru it was a nearly identical amount at $83 million dollars. These figures represent 0.84% and 0.78% respectively of Ecuador and Peru’s gross domestic product from fisheries. Llerena noted that “if we had data on the artisanal fishing sector alone, the percentage of loss would be much greater.”
Ecuadorian and Peruvian fishers participated anonymously in the surveys. Image courtesy of USFQ.
The investigation is part of the initiative Pacific Plastic: Science to Solutions, a network of researchers seeking to generate scientific data on the sources, impacts and solutions around plastic waste in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
A methodology for Latin America
Llerena says similar studies have been carried out in East Asia. Those were easier to do because fishing fleets in countries like Japan and South Korea are insured and therefore report all incidents with plastic waste.
Economist Pablo Llerena talks to fishers about the project. Image courtesy of USFQ.
“In Latin America, it’s another story, and even worse in the artisanal fishing sector, which is super informal, so insurance is impossible,” Llerena says. For their study, he and his team found another way of collecting data: interviewing the fishers.
To carry out this fieldwork, the researchers teamed up with the Eastern Pacific Fishing School, a foundation made up of associations of Ecuador’s fishing sector, and with two Peruvian organizations, the Marine Institute of Peru (IMPARPE) and ProDelphinus. This gave them access to fishers so they could carry out anonymous and randomized surveys in the main ports in Ecuador and Peru. In all, they interviewed 1,349 fishers across both countries.
Walter Borbor is a fisherman and member of the Insular Front. He has participated in 50 coastal cleanups in Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands. Image by Ana Cristina Alvarado.
The sources of plastic pollution
One of the goals of the investigation was to obtain accurate data about the quantity of plastics reaching the two countries’ coasts. Ávila-Santamaría says they used the figures of plastic waste generated in the cantons and municipalities where they carried out the surveys as a proxy.
The authors based their work on studies indicating that most of the waste generated on land ends up in the sea. With this information, they developed econometric calculations showing that in municipalities with greater volumes of plastic waste, fishers were more likely to run into problems. The researchers confirmed the findings in their interviews with the fishers.
Researchers survey fishers as they work. Image courtesy of USFQ.
Between 2021 and 2022, the annual likelihood of an artisanal fisher encountering plastic waste in the sea was 49% in Ecuador and 53% in Peru, they found. The percentage of fishers who reported incidents between 2019 and 2022 was 55% in Ecuador and 57% in Peru.
“The sea is very polluted. Fish are stressed. All this affects the fishing economy,” says Juan Pablo Muñoz-Pérez, a marine biologist and researcher at USFQ who specializes in plastic pollution in the Galápagos Islands.
Muñoz-Pérez, who wasn’t involved in the study, says this is a complex issue involving various actors: only 9% of global plastic waste is recycled, while the remainder is, for the most part, buried in landfills. However, Muñoz-Pérez said the fishing sector also bears some responsibility for marine plastic waste.
Participating fishers received reusable bags to prevent plastic use. Image courtesy of IMARPE.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 4.9 million fishing boats navigate the world’s oceans. These vessels spend months and even years at sea, and while they take all sorts of products for food, personal hygiene and health, among others, “none return to port with the trash they’ve generated,” Muñoz-Pérez says.
“No one knows what happens to the trash of industrial fishers…. There are millions of boats floating around. Where is their garbage?” he says.
In his own research, Muñoz-Pérez found that one of the main sources of plastic pollution in the Galápagos Islands is industrial fishing, and that microplastics detected in sea turtles come from fishing nets abandoned in the ocean.
Llerena says the surveys revealed a large faction of artisanal fishers who are concerned about the balance between their economic activity and the marine ecosystem.
“They are committed people who want to find a solution to this issue of plastic waste,” he says.
Some 400 million metric tons of plastic are produced globally each year. Image courtesy of WWF.
Plastic fishing gear
The researchers found that plastic waste from fishing gear was the most common type of problematic plastic in both countries. It accounted for 91% of incidents in Ecuador and 53% in Peru.
The most commonly encountered items were plastic bags, representing 35% and 83% respectively in Ecuador and Peru. In Ecuador, plastic bottles and food packaging each accounted for 30% and 25%. In Peru, plastic bottles were involved in 10% of incidents and fishing nets 2%.
Fishers on the coast of the Puerto Cabuyal–Punta de San Clemente marine reserve, Ecuador. Image courtesy of Cassandra Garduño.
Plastic fouling of propellers was the second most common incident in Peru (39.5%). In Ecuador, the main causes for entanglement were plastic bags (36%), fishing nets (26%) and ropes (21%), while in Peru they were plastic bags (82%), ropes (8.7%) and fishing nets (7.7%).
In Ecuador, water pump blockages occurred due to abandoned nets (46%), plastic bags (38%) and pieces of fishing gear (15%). In Peru, fishers said this problem was caused exclusively by plastic bags.
Plastic bags and bottles were the main causes of collisions in Ecuador, each representing 33% of cases. Food packaging came next, responsible for 13% of cases.
Pieces of plastic found on the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. Image courtesy of Isabel Alarcón.
In Peru, collisions were mostly with plastic bags, constituting 85% of incidents, and to a lesser extent with plastic bottles and food packaging, which constituted 8%.
The researchers also included questions about the losses these incidents caused, information that was later used to calculate the average loss for each fisher and each country during the study period.
“The goal is for all this information to contribute to the development of public policies and for it to reach decision-makers,” Llerena says. He adds that Pacific Plastic: Science to Solutions is represented on and has contributed to the international negotiating committee on plastic pollution, which is working to produce a global plastics treaty.
Members of the Pacific Plastic: Science to Solutions research network. Image courtesy of USFQ.
Muñoz-Pérez, who is also part of the network, was an adviser for the Ecuadorian government in the latest negotiations that took place in November 2024.
“Every country in the world is talking about this global problem,” he says. “The study’s results are discouraging, but it’s important to have this information so we can improve things.”
Llerena and Ávila-Santamaría are continuing their research on the issue. They’re now looking into how the presence of plastics in the sea affects fishers’ productivity, and its impact on tourism in Ecuador and Peru.
Banner image of marine plastic pollution, courtesy of Jack Perks/Greenpeace.
This story was first published here in Spanish on Feb. 20, 2025.
Citations :
Llerena, P. D., Avila-Santamaría, J. J., Gabela, M. V., Purca, S., Mena, C. F., & Cárdenas, S. A. (2025). Assessing economic losses in artisanal fisheries from marine plastic pollution in coastal Ecuador and Peru. Marine Policy, 173, 106553. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106553
Muñoz-Pérez, J. P., Lewbart, G. A., Alarcón-Ruales, D., Skehel, A., Cobos, E., Rivera, R., … Townsend, K. A. (2023). Galápagos and the plastic problem. Frontiers in Sustainability, 4. doi:10.3389/frsus.2023.1091516
Muñoz-Pérez, J. P., Lewbart, G. A., Toapanta, T., Chadwick, H., Okoffo, E. D., Alarcón-Ruales, D., … Townsend, K. A. (2024). Plastic pollution and health metrics in wild juvenile green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) from two Ecuadorian national parks: Galápagos and Machalilla. Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science, 2. doi:10.3389/famrs.2024.1439512
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