The behaviour change campaign team at each municipality uses a mix of creative materials and community mobilization activities to inspire and educate fishers and their families about the benefits of working together to manage their fisheries better. In the ‘Readiness’ phase, the messages are focused on getting fishers to become registered fishers, complying with basic fishing laws, and participate in meetings. In the second phase, after the managed access areas are institutionalized, the messages focus on building compliance for the rules and monitoring of their catch. Through social marketing, Fish Forever can more easily earn buy-in from communities to follow best practices for fishing and encourage new solution innovations from communities for sustainable fisheries management.
A strong sense of place and identity among fishers in communities and active support of municipal and village leaders, combined with motivated and efficient Fish Forever and Rare staff, has enabled sites in Brazil to replicated their success in other regions.
Many commonalities exist between sites, so campaigns were able to use and adapt materials from other municipalities also focusing on fisheries management. Local adaptation, especially of mobilization activities, helped to make the campaigns more site-specific and ‘ownable’ by the community.