Data from: A low-cost solution for documenting distribution and abundance of endangered marine fauna and impacts from fisheries

Fisheries bycatch is a widespread and serious issue that leads to declines of many important and threatened marine species. However, documenting the distribution, abundance, population trends and threats to sparse populations of marine species is often beyond the capacity of developing countries because such work is complex, time consuming and often extremely expensive. We have developed a flexible tool to document spatial distribution and population trends for dugongs and other marine species in the form of an interview questionnaire supported by a structured data upload sheet and a comprehensive project manual. Recognising the effort invested in getting interviewers to remote locations, the questionnaire is comprehensive, but low cost. The questionnaire has already been deployed in 18 countries across the Indo-Pacific region. Project teams spent an average of USD 5,000 per country and obtained large data sets on dugong distribution, trends, catch and bycatch, and threat overlaps. Findings indicated that >50% of respondents had never seen dugongs and that 20% had seen a single dugong in their lifetimes despite living and fishing in areas of known or suspected dugong habitat, suggesting that dugongs occured in low numbers. Only 3% of respondents had seen mother and calf pairs, indicative of low reproductive output. Dugong hunting was still common in several countries. Gillnets and hook and line were the most common fishing gears, with the greatest mortality caused by gillnets. The questionnaire has also been used to study manatees in the Caribbean, coastal cetaceans along the eastern Gulf of Thailand and western Peninsular Malaysia, and river dolphins in Peru. This questionnaire is a powerful tool for studying distribution and relative abundance for marine species and fishery pressures, and determining potential conservation hotspot areas. We provide the questionnaire and supporting documents for open-access use by the scientific and conservation communities.渔业兼捕（Fisheries bycatch）是一项普遍且严峻的问题，会造成诸多重要濒危海洋物种的种群衰退。然而，针对稀有种群的海洋物种开展分布、丰度、种群趋势及威胁因子的记录工作，往往超出发展中国家的能力范畴——此类工作复杂度高、耗时漫长且成本极其高昂。我们开发了一款灵活工具，以访谈问卷为载体，配合结构化数据上传表与完整项目手册，用于记录儒艮（Dugong）及其他海洋物种的空间分布与种群趋势。考虑到将访谈人员派往偏远地区所需投入的工作量，本问卷虽内容全面，但成本低廉。该问卷已在印太地区的18个国家投入使用。项目团队在每个国家的平均投入为5000美元，共获取了关于儒艮分布、种群趋势、捕捞量与兼捕量，以及威胁叠加区域的大规模数据集。调查结果显示，超五成受访者从未见过儒艮；即便在已知或疑似儒艮栖息地的区域生活并从事捕捞作业，仍有两成受访者一生中仅见过一次儒艮，这表明儒艮种群数量极低。仅有3%的受访者见过母儒艮与幼崽的组合，反映出儒艮的繁殖输出水平较低。儒艮猎捕活动在部分国家仍较为普遍。刺网（Gillnets）与钩钓渔具（Hook and line）是最常见的捕捞渔具，其中刺网造成的儒艮死亡率最高。该问卷还被用于研究加勒比海的海牛（Manatee）、泰国湾东部与马来西亚半岛西部沿岸的沿海鲸豚类，以及秘鲁的淡水豚。本问卷是一款功能强大的研究工具，可用于探究海洋物种的分布与相对丰度、渔业压力，并识别潜在的保护热点区域。我们将本问卷及配套文档开放共享，供科研与保护社群免费使用。