As the effects of climate change increase, distributional range shifts of species are also expected to be magnified, necessitating a better understanding of their social-ecological implications for the adaptive management of fisheries and biodiversity conservation. In this paper, we focused on the human dimensions of recreational fisheries in the context of an ongoing distributional range shift of a target species. Specifically, we mined data on YouTube from recreational anglers and spearfishers targeting the white grouper (Epinephelus aeneus), a species expanding northwards in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea (Italy, France, and Spain). We retrieved 453 videos from Italy and Spain. We analyzed the social engagement of the videos (i.e., number of views, likes, and comments) and applied sentiment analysis to all the comments posted on these videos. Results showed that social engagement is overall higher for spearfishers than anglers. We documented an overall positive polarity and positive emotions in the comments of the posted videos, but specific negative polarity and negative emotions were more common in angling videos than in spearfishing ones. Most importantly, we detected a significant positive correlation between the emotions of joy and surprise and the latitude at which white grouper was caught. This result suggests that recreational fishers may respond to the arrival of the white grouper by showing more joy and surprise at higher latitudes where the species is rare than at lower latitudes where the species is common. Our study illustrates how digital data from social media can be used to monitor social-ecological interactions, such as tracking species distributional range shifts and the human responses to them, with potential management implications. Specifically, these results may be informative to adapt necessary tailored-management actions by improving engagement with fishers and enhancing more effective communication strategies, finally evoking environmental stewardship

V.S. is supported by a “Ramón y Cajal” research fellowships (RYC2021-033065-I) granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. The authors acknowledge the Spanish government through the “Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence” accreditation to ICM-CSIC (#CEX2019-000928-S) and partial funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreements No 869300 (FutureMares) and No 101059877 (GES4SEAS)

12 pages, 6 figures.-- Data Availability: The data/code that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, L.E. None of the data/code are publicly available because they may contain information that could compromise the privacy of social media users.-- Ethical approval for this research study was granted by CSIC with 215/2020 as the approval number

Peer reviewed