Objective: This study aims to explore the fishing methods and occupational safety practices of fisherfolk in a coastal municipality in Central Luzon.

Methods: Key informant interviews were conducted with leaders of fishing organizations and the Municipal Agricultural Officer using a semi-structured interview guide.

Results: Fisherfolk in the selected municipality adopted a variety of fishing practices, equipment, and methods suitable for each individual or group of fisherfolk. Safety practices were either self-learned from observation of elders and family members or arose from a trial-and-error basis, with an emphasis on precautionary measures to avoid injury.

Conclusion: Fishing practices highly varies, the most prominent of which is using numerous equipment for catching fish and other marine products by hand. Occupational safety practices are mainly focused on the avoidance of hazards.

Predatory hunting is an important type of innate behavior evolutionarily conserved across the animal kingdom. It is typically composed of a set of sequential actions, including prey search, pursuit, attack, and consumption. This behavior is subject to control by the nervous system. Early studies used toads as a model to probe the neuroethology of hunting, which led to the proposal of a sensory-triggered release mechanism for hunting actions. More recent studies have used genetically-trackable zebrafish and rodents and have made breakthrough discoveries in the neuroethology and neurocircuits underlying this behavior. Here, we review the sophisticated neurocircuitry involved in hunting and summarize the detailed mechanism for the circuitry to encode various aspects of hunting neuroethology, including sensory processing, sensorimotor transformation, motivation, and sequential encoding of hunting actions. We also discuss the overlapping brain circuits for hunting and feeding and point out the limitations of current studies. We propose that hunting is an ideal behavioral paradigm in which to study the neuroethology of motivated behaviors, which may shed new light on epidemic disorders, including binge-eating, obesity, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Animals ; Zebrafish ; Hunting ; Predatory Behavior/physiology* ; Neurons/physiology* ; Motivation