The study, published in the journal Ambio, was led by Mahatub Khan Badhon of Virginia Tech and the University of Dhaka, together with an international team including Leandro Castello, M. Aaron MacNeil, Steven J. Cooke, and Vivian M. Nguyen. The team set out to test a deceptively simple question: are food and cultural values merely peripheral add-ons to recreational fishing, or are they part of the underlying architecture that organizes why different people fish? Their answer, grounded in one of the largest multidimensional surveys of urban shore anglers to date, is emphatically the latter.

Recreational fisheries are a massive phenomenon. An estimated 220 million people participate worldwide, and participation is growing among increasingly diverse populations. Yet the scientific frameworks used to understand anglers, including fishing motivations, catch orientation, and centrality to lifestyle, were largely built within leisure and sport traditions dating back to the 1970s. Motivations have typically been split into activity-general motives such as enjoying nature or relaxing, and activity-specific motives such as the thrill of the catch or pursuing trophy fish. Food-oriented motives have rarely been included, even though evidence stretching back to the 1990s showed that many anglers eat what they catch. Catch orientation measures attitudes toward catching something, catching many fish, catching large fish, and keeping fish, but harvesting fish is not the same as food provisioning as a social practice tied to household needs, sharing, identity, and tradition. Centrality to lifestyle, meanwhile, has usually been measured with leisure-based indicators adapted from activities like birdwatching.

To close this gap, the researchers surveyed shore anglers at 48 popular fishing sites in Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Rochester in the United States, and Windsor, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Toronto, and Kingston in Canada. Cities were purposively selected to capture a demographically heterogeneous urban angling population, and the number of survey sites per city was allocated using log-transformed population metrics to avoid over-sampling larger centers. Trained local assistants conducted intercept surveys using a stratified spatiotemporal design, with extra effort on weekends and holidays when fishing activity peaks. Online recruitment through QR-code follow-ups, tackle shops, Facebook groups, and an email listserv broadened coverage. After quality screening, 443 of 482 responses were retained for analysis.

The survey instrument was deliberately expanded. Twenty-one preference items measured on five-point Likert scales covered motivations, catch orientation, and centrality to lifestyle, but the team added new items probing food and cultural motives, and treated centrality as a multifaceted construct capable of reflecting economic, cultural, and social embeddedness. They also asked about catch usage, including eating fish, sharing fish with neighbors or fellow anglers, and saving money, alongside fish-eating frequency, reliance on locally caught fish, and awareness of consumption advisories. Sociodemographic questions covered age, gender, ethnicity, income, education, employment, and languages spoken at home. Nearly a third of respondents spoke at least one language other than English, with Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, French, Bengali, Cantonese, and Portuguese among the most common.

The analytical workflow was stepwise and statistically rigorous. Hierarchical cluster analysis of the preference and behavior items revealed five coherent latent dimensions: food provisioning, cultural or traditional values, challenge and performance, leisure, and social-financial centrality. Strikingly, items measuring food-oriented motivation, keeping fish, eating fish, and sharing fish clustered tightly together, forming a food provisioning dimension with high internal consistency, as did the social-financial items. Cultural items such as fishing as tradition and identity grouped together with moderate coherence. This cross-framework convergence is one of the study’s most important technical findings: food-linked items from four different measurement traditions loaded jointly on the same underlying structure, suggesting that food provisioning is not a niche topic but a genuine latent construct of recreational fisheries.

Next, k-means clustering with six validation criteria identified three distinct angler groups, and canonical discriminant analysis defined their separation along two axes. The first canonical function explained 84.3 percent of the among-group variation and formed the primary dividing line between leisure and sport fishing on one side and food or subsistence practices on the other. The leisure and sport oriented group emphasized outdoor enjoyment, challenge, companionship, and catching large or numerous fish, while positioning away from harvest-dependent dimensions. The cultural and community oriented group reported that stopping fishing would reduce income, cut access to food or protein, erode traditions, and sever social connections, indicating that fishing is closely tied to household well-being and continuity of tradition. The provisioning and food oriented group sat between the two, associated with direct food use, sharing, food-oriented motivation, and fishing-related memories, but with less perceived economic dependence than the cultural group.

Perhaps the most provocative result concerns who these anglers are. Multivariate tests showed that sociodemographic characteristics explained only 2.2 percent of the variation in group membership, meaning the three groups could not be cleanly distinguished by age, ethnicity, income, or education. Food provisioning and culturally meaningful fishing, in other words, are not confined to specific minority or low-income communities, as earlier case studies sometimes implied. They appear to be mainstream, widely distributed dimensions of urban shore fishing in the lower Great Lakes. The groups did differ strongly in attitudes and behaviors: centrality to lifestyle and catch usage each explained more than half of the multivariate variation among groups, far more than motivations or catch orientation, suggesting that what fishing functionally provides in people’s lives matters more than what they expect from a day on the water.

The implications for management are substantial. If agencies assume that licensed anglers want only sport and recreation, they risk designing regulations, creel surveys, and engagement strategies that miss the needs of a large share of their constituency. Harvest limits, consumption advisories, and access rules carry very different consequences for an angler who releases everything than for one who shares catch with extended family or relies on fish to stretch a household budget. The authors argue that recognizing a fuzzy boundary between recreational and subsistence fishing, and treating food and cultural values as core rather than peripheral, would produce more representative monitoring and more inclusive policy.

The study has limits the authors acknowledge: it focused on urban, shore-based access, relied on cross-sectional self-reports subject to recall and social-desirability bias, and used descriptive rather than predictive classification methods. The centrality scale will need confirmatory factor analysis to establish measurement invariance across groups. Still, the multidimensional perspective and analytical approach appear broadly transferable to other regions and governance contexts. What emerges is a fundamentally richer portrait of angling: not a single activity with a single meaning, but a continuum running from pure sport to household provisioning, with culture and community woven throughout. For the millions of people casting lines from city shores, the fish on the dinner table, and the traditions it carries, may matter just as much as the fight to land it.

Subject of Research: Food provisioning and cultural dimensions of urban recreational fisheries in the lower Great Lakes

Article Title: The overlooked role of food and cultural dimensions in recreational fisheries

Article References: Badhon, M. K., Castello, L., MacNeil, M. A., Stern, M. J., Fiorella, K. J., Beaudoin, C., Coffin-Schmitt, J. L., Rice, E. D., Crowley-Aksamit, C. K., Andersen, A. M., Graham, R. M., Stedman, R., Cooke, S. J., Nyboer, E. A., & Nguyen, V. M. (2026). The overlooked role of food and cultural dimensions in recreational fisheries. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-026-02484-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s13280-026-02484-x

Keywords: recreational fisheries, food provisioning, angler diversity, Great Lakes, cultural practices, urban fishing, fishing motivations, catch orientation, centrality to lifestyle, subsistence fishing, fisheries management, cluster analysis

The study was led by Saeed M. Alghamdi of Umm Al-Qura University, together with collaborators spanning respiratory care programs across Saudi Arabia and the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. The team set out to explore perceptions regarding the use of traditional Saudi singing and dancing as a method to promote general and respiratory health. Their rationale rests on a simple physiological observation: singing, like breathing, demands precise breath control and recruits many of the same anatomical structures that respiratory therapists target in pulmonary rehabilitation, including the diaphragm, intercostal muscles, and the muscles of the upper airway.

Singing is, at its core, the production of musical tones with the voice, and it requires the coordinated regulation of inhalation, phonation, and controlled exhalation. When people sing sustained phrases, they typically deepen their tidal volume, slow their respiratory rate, and increase minute ventilation efficiency, mirroring techniques used in formal breathing retraining. Dancing adds an aerobic dimension, elevating heart rate and ventilatory demand while building endurance in the muscles of respiration. The concept of Singing for Lung Health, often abbreviated SLH in the respiratory therapy literature, has gained traction in recent years as a structured intervention for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, and previous research suggests that singing and dancing can improve multiple aspects of health in both healthy individuals and those with respiratory conditions.

To test whether these ideas resonate within a Saudi cultural context, the researchers conducted an observational, cross-sectional survey in the Makkah region. The questionnaire combined closed-ended questions, which yielded quantitative data summarized as frequencies and percentages, with open-ended questions designed to surface the key barriers that might prevent people from engaging in traditional performance practices. Ethical approval was obtained from Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, and the study was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki, with all participants providing informed consent before completing the survey.

The results paint a picture of a population already deeply engaged with these traditions and broadly optimistic about their health value. Of the 273 participants, 153, or 56.0 percent, were female, the majority were aged 21 to 41 years, and 88 participants, representing 32.2 percent, reported having chronic respiratory diseases. Among all respondents, 203 people, or 74.4 percent, reported engaging in Saudi traditional singing and dancing. Within this engaged group, 120 participants, or 59.1 percent, believed that traditional singing and dancing had a positive impact on general health, while 93, or 45.8 percent, agreed that these practices are potentially improving lung health.

One of the most compelling findings was the relationship between active participation and perceived benefit. Participants who actively engaged in traditional singing and dancing were significantly more likely to perceive associated health benefits compared to those who did not, with differences reaching statistical significance at p less than 0.001. This pattern held even though the study could not establish causation; it nevertheless suggests that firsthand experience of the breath work and physical exertion involved in traditional performance may shape how people understand its health potential.

Age emerged as a significant factor in engagement. The association was statistically significant, with a chi-square value of 6.20, p equal to 0.045, and a Cramer’s V of 0.151, indicating a modest but measurable effect. Engagement was highest among participants aged 20 years and under, at 85.3 percent, followed by those aged over 41 years at 75.8 percent, and lowest among those aged 21 to 41 years at 69.8 percent. The authors suggest this pattern may reflect the central role of traditional performance in youth gatherings and older community celebrations, while working-age adults may face time constraints that limit participation.

Gender shaped the barrier landscape in a notable way. Female participants were significantly more likely than males to report a lack of community support as a barrier to practicing traditional singing and dancing, a difference that reached statistical significance at p equal to 0.004. No statistically significant gender differences were observed for other perceived barriers. This finding carries practical weight for any future health promotion program: interventions built around traditional performance would need to address social support structures, particularly for women, if they hope to achieve broad participation across the population.

The study’s authors are careful to frame their findings as perceptual rather than clinical. The survey measured what people in Makkah believe about the health effects of singing and dancing, not objective changes in lung function, exercise capacity, or quality of life. Nonetheless, the conclusion points clearly toward the next step: further research assessing the influence of singing and dancing on clinically relevant parameters would be useful. Such studies could measure forced expiratory volume, respiratory muscle strength, six-minute walk distance, and validated quality-of-life instruments before and after structured programs of traditional performance, providing the evidence base needed to move from cultural intuition to clinical recommendation.

If future trials confirm measurable respiratory benefits, the implications could extend well beyond Saudi Arabia. Culturally grounded interventions often outperform generic health messaging because they arrive wrapped in meaning, identity, and joy rather than obligation. Traditional Saudi singing and dancing, practiced for thousands of years in religious ceremonies, social gatherings, and artistic performances, may offer exactly that kind of vehicle: a form of pulmonary rehabilitation that people already love, passed down through generations, waiting to be recognized as medicine hiding in plain sight. The research was funded by Umm Al-Qura University under grant number 26UQU4340488GSSR02, and the study was registered with the Open Science Framework at 10.17605/OSF.IO/867ME.

Subject of Research: Perceptions of traditional Saudi singing and dancing as a means of promoting general and respiratory health in Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

Article Title: The potential use of traditional singing and dancing for respiratory health promotion in Saudi Arabia: an observational study

Article References: Alghamdi, S. M., Kabrah, S. M., Alhawsawi, H. B., Almushayt, B. S., Bajudah, R. K., Abu Dark, R. M., Aldhahir, A. M., Alsulayyim, A. S., Alasimi, A. H., Philip, K. E., Alzahrani, H. A., Alhindi, A. O., Alhindi, A. O., Alasmari, A. M., Alahmadi, F. H., Alqarni, A. A., & Alqahtani, J. S. (2026). The potential use of traditional singing and dancing for respiratory health promotion in Saudi Arabia: an observational study. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-026-05581-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-026-05581-2

Keywords: Saudi Arabia, traditional singing, traditional dancing, respiratory health, health promotion, singing for lung health, respiratory therapy, cultural practices, quality of life, chronic respiratory disease, cross-sectional survey, dance movement therapy