Data quality, validation and ethics

BECCA relies on memory, so uncertainty should be expected and managed rather than ignored3,11,14. Respondents may round numbers, be unsure of the exact year, report group catches as individual catches, or use local units that vary between people. Gear may have changed through time. Access, regulations, markets, and habitat conditions may also have changed. These are not reasons to avoid BECCA, but, they are reasons to design it carefully.

A strong BECCA records respondent confidence, asks why the event is remembered, distinguishes individual from group catch, records the gear used, records the hours fished or harvested, and documents whether the unit is exact, estimated, or locally converted. Responses can then be assigned simple quality flags. A high-quality response includes a clear number, year, effort, gear, unit, and area. A lower-quality response may be missing effort or have an uncertain unit. Responses without a number or year should not be used in the main time-series analysis.

Community validation is recommended. Results should be returned to fishers and harvesters before final reporting where possible. This can happen through community meetings, fisher association meetings, small focus groups, local partner workshops, online sessions, printed summaries, or local language briefings. The purpose is not to check every number. It is to ask whether the overall pattern makes sense, whether important context is missing, whether any groups were underrepresented, and whether the interpretation is fair.

Good validation discussions ask whether the trends match local experience, whether there are years that look wrong, whether storms, regulations, market changes, access changes, habitat loss, or gear changes explain the pattern, and what actions should follow.

Ethics and community safeguards

BECCA should never be treated as a way to extract knowledge from communities without returning value. Fishers and harvesters are contributing information that may relate to livelihoods, food security, cultural practice, identity, access rights, and management decisions. They should understand why the information is being collected, how it will be used, who will see it, and how results will be returned.

Catch information can be sensitive. It may reveal fishing grounds, high-value species, illegal activity, customary practices, or livelihood dependence. The survey should avoid collecting personally identifiable sensitive information unless it is necessary and consented.

Where possible:

  • anonymise individual responses;

  • report results at community or regional level;

  • avoid publishing exact fishing spots without permission;

  • store data securely;

  • explain who will have access;

  • avoid using results to punish individual fishers; and

  • discuss risks with local partners before publication.

Where BECCA is used with Indigenous Peoples or customary communities, the process should follow local protocols and principles of free, prior, and informed consent. Communities should be involved in deciding what is asked, how data are stored, who owns the data, who can access the data, and how results are shared.

BECCA can reveal decline. Decline may lead to calls for restrictions, closures, gear changes, habitat protection, or restoration. These decisions can affect livelihoods. Findings should therefore be discussed with communities before being converted into policy recommendations. The method should support fairer management, not top-down control based on extracted knowledge.