From acceptance to support: fishers’ pathways to adopting circle hooks to reduce sea turtle bycatch

Sea turtle bycatch remains a critical obstacle to marine biodiversity conservation in the Eastern Pacific longline fishery. While circle hooks are proven to reduce sea turtle bycatch, uptake in longline fleets remains patchy. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and surveys conducted with fishers, NGO staff, and change agents, this paper explores the multiscale drivers of circle hook adoption and the social contingencies that shape initial acceptance and sustained support for circle hooks in Ecuadorian and Costa Rican longline fisheries. By juxtaposing two nations with contrasting market infrastructures, the study highlights how place-based economic contexts shape global biodiversity strategies. Our findings show that early experiences with circle hooks strongly shaped later trajectories. In Ecuador, low-quality carbon hooks, underperformance for mahi-mahi, and high tariffs on stainless-steel hooks produced negative first impressions and structural barriers, despite promotional hook-exchange programs. In Costa Rica, established retail networks normalized the use of circle hooks, yet concerns about mahi-mahi catch persisted, and uptake of the complementary conservation technologies of dehookers and dipnets was low. Across both countries, perceptions of fairness and effectiveness—and in Santa Marianita, Ecuador, the shark-fin market—mediated adoption, producing unpredictable, sometimes perverse paths from acceptance to support. Extending scholarship on transition to sustainable technologies, we introduce a temporal, agency-centered distinction between acceptance and support for marine conservation technology. Our findings indicate that adopting a conservation technology does not imply a conservation value or intention. We distinguish acceptance as passive, short-term tolerance, whereas support entails active, value-driven commitment, which may be shaped by conservation values, economic incentives, or both. Treating acceptance and support as interchangeable obscures the temporal and agency dimensions critical for scaling marine conservation technologies. We argue that programs seeking biodiversity gains must explicitly aim to cultivate support that aligns fishers’ economic realities with conservation values and intentions, rather than treating adoption of a conservation technology as sufficient.