Offshore Drilling Operations and Fishery Monitoring Programs: A Quantitative Impact Assessment Experience in Southern Bahia, Northeast of Brazil

Rodrigo de Oliveira Campos1, Cristiano Gil Dapper1, Maria Eduarda Pessoa2, and Thays Paes Amaro2

1. HDPP Data Analysis, São Paulo, Brazil

2. QGEP Queiroz Galvão Exploração e Produção, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract: Small-scale fishery and offshore drilling operations is not an unusual issue on shallow waters spatial management demands. Concerns on fisheries catch rates and the impacts from oil and gas drilling activities were assessed in Southern Bahia, NE Brazil. Small-scale fishing landings were surveyed from April 2011 to December 2013 in order to comply with the environmental license requirements for an oil and gas company. A Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) approach was designed with the application of the analysis of covariance model to infer about the influence of drilling on local fishing productive index. The handline fishing was the selected gear for the statistical modelling because of its dataset spread out over the fishing grounds and months of the year; providing a balanced experiment. The final model showed that the drilling operations were not a significant source of variation on handline fishing catches in Southern Bahia. The applied analysis, based on analysis of covariance and BACI design, was a suitable alternative for a quantitative and inferential description of “what happened”. The results produced may be useful for a range of stakeholders in different instances and at distinct levels of decision making on offshore drilling and small-scale fishing activities.

Key words: offshore drilling, small-scale fisheries, landing survey, BACI design, general linear model