Regional and gendered patterns in Madagascar’s small-scale fisheries

Small-scale fisheries play an essential role in supporting food security and economic resilience in Madagascar’s coastal communities. These fisheries are diverse, ranging from offshore net and line fishing, often dominated by men, to nearshore gleaning and hand-held spearfishing, frequently practiced by women. Despite their importance, they remain underrepresented in official statistics, and women’s contributions are often underreported. Few studies have examined how gender, gear type, and regional context interact to shape catch composition and productivity across ecological and social settings. To address this gap, we analyzed catch-per-unit-effort data from 9,068 fishing trips conducted in 2023–2024 across 17 villages in two coastal regions of Madagascar: Diana in the north and Atsimo-Andrefana in the southwest. We examined how gear use, catch composition, and productivity varied by gender and region, complemented by social surveys documenting fishers’ habitats, access modes (e.g., walking, sailboat), and key organisms harvested. Framed within a coupled human-natural systems perspective, our approach recognizes reciprocal links between ecological conditions, fishing practices, and socio-economic contexts. Gamma GLMs showed that catch-per-unit-effort was consistently higher in Diana, consistent with healthier reefs and greater access to efficient gears. Spearguns, predominantly used by men, yielded the highest predicted catch-per-unit-effort (3.00 kg fisher -1 h -1 in Diana; 1.23 in Atsimo-Andrefana). Hand-held spears also performed well, particularly in Diana, where women had slightly higher catch-per-unit-effort than men (2.13 vs. 1.85 kg fisher -1 h -1 ), reflecting shorter, targeted trips for octopus and fish. In contrast, fishers in Atsimo-Andrefana operated in habitats characterized as more degraded and used less advanced gear, resulting in lower overall catch-per-unit-effort and greater diversification, especially among women harvesting invertebrates. All catch-per-unit-effort values were calculated using total trip duration, and some catch weights were imputed from average species weights. Despite uneven sampling effort, sensitivity analyses confirmed these factors did not alter conclusions. This analysis provides a quantitative baseline for future work tracking how coupled social and ecological dynamics in these fisheries evolve over time. Our results highlight how ecological conditions, gear access, and gendered practices shape fishing strategies, emphasizing the need for management approaches addressing both environmental change and the social realities of communities dependent on marine resources.