Fisheries have transformed significantly in recent decades, and further changes are anticipated to address pressing environmental and social challenges. In this context, there is an urgent need to implement science-based public policies that incorporate local knowledge. It is necessary to better assess fishers’ perceptions, including both historical (e.g., perceived changes of abundance of species) and future (e.g., views on potential future changes) perspectives. In this paper, we focus on a case study of small-pelagic fisheries in the Spanish northwestern Mediterranean Sea, using semi-structured interviews, graphical analysis, and a Q-methodology. Based in the information obtained from all the active purse seiners vessels in Castelló de la Plana, the most important Spanish Mediterranean small pelagic purse seine harbour, we show how these methodologies are useful for gathering fisher’s knowledge regarding historical biomass trends for small pelagic and accompanying species over the last six decades, contributing valuable information on periods where no scientific assessments were available. When looking towards the future, Q-methodology reveals three fisher discourses regarding how to ensure the future sustainability of fisheries: (i) "We don’t need more subsidies we need more fish," (ii) "We need more public support for fishing," and (iii) "The future of the fishery it’s not in our hands". These three perspectives highlight internal disagreements about what should be the priorities for implementing public policies. However, results also show consensus that the implementation of adaptive management measures can be of common interest, and that bottom trawling activities should avoid juveniles and spawning ground of small pelagic fish.

This study is a contribution to SEINE-ETP project (Ocean Stewardship Fund MAVA Grant). VS is supported by a “Ramón y Cajal” research fellowships (RYC2021-033065-I) granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. The authors acknowledge partial funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 grant agreement No 101059877 (GES4SEAS). This work acknowledges institutional support of the “Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence” accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S) to the Institute of Marine Science (ICMCSIC).

Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix.