Institutional amnesia pushes fish spawning aggregations towards extirpation

[摘要] 1. How institutions create and manage knowledge has been explored in the context of management and business science. However, little effort has been madeto understand how, and why, these institutions forget what works or does notwork, and no research in this field has been conducted in conservation or fisheries science.2. This paper examines the concept of institutional amnesia by focussing a lenson fish spawning aggregations and efforts to monitor and protect them in theMesoamerican Reef.3. For over 20 years, underwater visual census survey data has been collected periodically at 36 spawning aggregation sites, and grey literature is available since the1940's, yet managers and conservation practitioners report that abundance tendencies for 48% of grouper and snapper spawning species across the 36 sites are‘Unknown’, despite measurable >99% declines in fish abundance in some cases.4. This text examines the reasons why site managers are uncertain in their reporting. The central argument is that institutional amnesia (resulting from factors suchas staff turnover, ineffective institutional learning, poor record keeping and a lackof storytelling) is contributing to suboptimal ecological outcomes for spawningaggregations, which are likely to continue unless measures are taken to ensurethe continuity of institutional knowledge.

[学科分类] 护理学

[关键词] institutional amnesia;marine conservation;shifting baselines