Identifying the factors that influence the amount of fish caught, and thus the fishers’ income, is important
for proposing or improving management plans. Some of these factors influencing fishing rewards may be
related to fishers’ behavior, which is driven by economic motivations. Therefore, those management rules
that have less of an impact on fishers’ income could achieve better acceptance and compliance from
fishers. We analyzed the relative influence of environmental and socioeconomic factors on fish catches
(biomass) in fishing communities of a large tropical river. We then used the results from this analysis to
propose alternative management scenarios in which we predicted potential fishers’ compliance (high,
moderate and low) based on the extent to which management proposals would affect fish catches and
fishers’ income.We used a General Linear Model (GLM) to analyze the influence of environmental (fishing
community, season and habitat) and socioeconomic factors (number of fishers in the crew, time spent
fishing, fishing gear used, type of canoe, distance traveled to fishing grounds) on fish catches (dependent
variable) in 572 fishing trips by small-scale fishers in the Lower Tocantins River, Brazilian Amazon. According
to the GLM, all factors together accounted for 43% of the variation in the biomass of the fish that
were caught. The behaviors of fishers’ that are linked to fishing effort, such as time spent fishing (42% of the
total explained by GLM), distance traveled to the fishing ground (12%) and number of fishers (10%), were all
positively related to the biomass of fish caught and could explain most of the variation on it. The environmental
factor of the fishing habitat accounted for 10% of the variation in fish caught. These results,
when applied to management scenarios, indicated that some combinations of the management measures,
such as selected lakes as no-take areas, restrictions on the use of gillnets (especially during the high-water
season) and individual quotas larger than fishers’ usual catches, would most likely have less impact on
fishers’ income. The proposed scenarios help to identify feasible management options, which could promote
the conservation of fish, potentially achieving higher fishers’ compliance.