The system consists of assigning

exclusive Territorial User Rights for Fishing (TURFs) to each management plan. Under the TURF arrangement, only licensed members of the plan are allowed to exploit their assigned territory, in return for detailed data gathering by the cofradías ( Fig. 2). The cofradías report daily landings and effort data for each fisher and zone in the plan, providing an important source of up to date information. At the beginnings 17-AAG research buy of the co-management system the cofradías were actively involved in the distribution, selection and classification of extraction zones. Currently, there is a constant participation of the cofradías in the management, surveillance and commercialization of the resource. Once the cofradías and DGPM have agreed on the guidelines for the fishing season these are published in the Boletin Oficial del Principado de Asturias, the official newsletter responsible for publishing new legislation. The co-management system has enabled the subdivision of the plans into detailed

management click here units, denominated as zones, which span from single rocks 3 m long up to 3.3 km extents of coastline. The system encompasses a total of 267 zones in approximately 200 km of the Asturian coastline and surrounding islands. Moreover, each zone has been classified according to the commercial quality of gooseneck barnacles it renders (Table 1). The spatial detail of management exhibited in this fishery can only be obtained through a co-management system, were all the resources users aid in the collection of data. Maintaining such an exhaustive database would be impossible in an open-access regime, due to the high enforcement costs and lack of workforce.

The management of the fishing Methocarbamol zones is also handled at a small-scale, by establishing bans at the beginning of the campaign through legal closures. These can either be total bans, closed for the entire fishing season, or partial bans where rocks are only opened for a few months, generally during the high season. These bans are distributed heterogeneously across the co-management plan with a large number of partial bans in all plans and a few, alternating total bans in 5 plans (Fig. 3). Partial bans are set to reserve zones for when the market demand is at its peak and the greatest profit will be gained. Total bans are generally applied to good quality zones to maximize profits for the next year and prevent overexploitation. The bans are initially proposed by the DGPM after a general inspection of the zones during the summer. However, these are not established until they have been approved by the cofradías, demonstrating a clear example of continuous collaboration between the government and the stakeholders, intrinsic to a co-management system.