Shifting baseline syndrome in the fishing community of Barcelona: insights from scientific and local ecological knowledge

The escalating human-driven pressures, such as coastal development, climate change, and overfishing, have led to habitat degradation and declines in marine resource abundance. These impacts pose significant threats to the livelihoods of coastal communities, particularly in the Mediterranean Sea. In situations where stock assessment data is scarce, fishers’ ecological knowledge (FEK) has proven valuable for understanding the ecological status of marine resources and their historical transformations. However, FEK can be affected by memory bias, reducing its reliability, a phenomenon known as the