{"id":408,"date":"2010-05-27T14:33:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T14:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/?p=408"},"modified":"2010-05-27T15:41:28","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T15:41:28","slug":"the-loss-of-large-fish-on-coral-reefs-by-doug-fenner-ph-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/2010\/05\/27\/the-loss-of-large-fish-on-coral-reefs-by-doug-fenner-ph-d\/","title":{"rendered":"The Loss of Large Fish on Coral Reefs by Doug Fenner, Ph.D."},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.sharksavers.org\/en\/education\/sharks-are-in-trouble\/399-loss-of-large-fish-on-coral-reefs.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s an updated version of the post above, provided by Dr. Fenner:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Largest Fish on Coral Reefs were the First to Go.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you\u2019ve got \u2018till it\u2019s gone,\u201d as we\u2019re only now finding out.<\/p>\n

Douglas Fenner, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many reef scientists (including the author) have spent their entire careers diving on reefs that have few big fish, and have never questioned whether that was normal or natural.\u00a0 Seeing big fish like sharks, humphead wrasse, bumphead parrots, mantas, goliath grouper and giant grouper, is very exciting for divers, and a big attraction for dive operators.\u00a0 One dive operator in Australia estimated that a single shark that he could reliably bring divers to might be worth $25,000 to his operation.\u00a0 In part, they are so exciting because they are so rare today.\u00a0 They are rare on most reefs anywhere near people.\u00a0 I dove for years in the Caribbean, and only once saw a goliath grouper, which was just a juvenile.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been diving for years in many places in the Indo-Pacific, and have only twice seen schools of bumphead parrots, both times of only about a dozen individuals.\u00a0 I\u2019ve only once seen a full size adult humphead wrasse.\u00a0 It is very easy to assume that reefs have always been the way that we first saw them, and judge their future condition based on that.\u00a0 As reefs degrade, each generation uses a lower condition as the baseline to judge further losses.\u00a0 This is called the \u201cshifting baseline\u201d (Sheppard, 1995).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the last few years, there have been a flurry of reports on the reef fish communities at very remote coral reefs in the Pacific, which are nearly pristine.\u00a0 First, a report on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was published by Friedlander and De Martini (2002).\u00a0 Tourists can only go to the \u201cmain Hawaiian Islands\u201d at the southeast end of the chain.\u00a0 The islands and reefs in the Northwest beyond Kaui are too small (though Midway briefly had a dive tourism operation).\u00a0 Turns out they are virtually swarming with big fish compared to the main Hawaiian Islands.\u00a0 The most common big fish there is giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis<\/em>), which reach 1.7 meters length (5 feet) and 68 kg (150 pounds) maximum.\u00a0 But there are also lots of sharks such as grey reef sharks and Galapagos sharks.\u00a0 These big predator fish are called \u201capex predators\u201d because they are at the apex of the food chain.\u00a0 Amazingly, they compose around half of all the weight (\u201cbiomass\u201d) of all the reef fish on these reefs (Birkeland and Friedlander, 2001).\u00a0 In contrast, when large areas of reefs around the main Hawaiian Islands are surveyed, there are very few sharks at all.\u00a0 The author has snorkeled a lot in the main Hawaiian Islands (and wrote a book on Hawaiian corals, \u201cCorals of Hawaii\u201d), but can\u2019t remember ever seeing a shark there.\u00a0 If you snorkel or dive in Hawaii, you will be surrounded by beautiful small fish (only), very different from a natural reef.\u00a0 Occasionally in the main Hawaiian Islands, a tiger shark attacks someone, and sometimes they are killed. This is tragic. \u00a0In the hysteria that follows, people go out and kill all the sharks they can find, perhaps around 200.\u00a0 Few if any of them are tiger sharks.\u00a0 People in western cultures love to fear sharks, which is supported in the popular media, such as the movie \u201cjaws.\u201d\u00a0 Around the world, sharks kill about 5 people per year, but many more people are killed by lightning and bee stings, among other things.\u00a0 Humans kill around 100 million sharks a year, so who is the bloodthirsty killer, shark or human?\u00a0 The rarity of sharks in the main Hawaiian islands is typical of reefs near people. \u00a0In the Philippines, in two years of about 10 dives a week, I saw about a total of about five sharks, and two of those were on the way to the market.\u00a0 A few years later I got to dive at Tubbataha reefs in the Philippines, which are remote and currently protected.\u00a0 Whitetip reef sharks were not uncommon there, though nothing like on the truly remote reefs that have not been fished.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 More recently, studies in the remote and unfished reefs in the Line Islands south of Hawaii, have found that there, too, about half of the fish biomass is in the big fish (Stevenson, 2006; Pala, 2007; Sandin et al. 2008).\u00a0 The fish expert, Dr. Gerry Allen, reports that in the Phoenix Islands (west of the Line Islands), in a one-hour dive, an average of about 15 sharks were seen.\u00a0 On many reefs near people, you may have to dive 100 or more dives to see one shark.\u00a0 In the Phoenix Is., you would see about 1500 sharks in those 100 dives.\u00a0 1500 times as many sharks.\u00a0 In fisheries science, overfishing has been defined as any fishing that is greater than the \u201cMaximum Sustainable Yield.\u201d (MSY).\u00a0 That is because at MSY, the long-term benefits to fishermen are maximized.\u00a0 (Maximum benefits to society are another question with additional considerations.)\u00a0 Most fisheries models say that MSY is at about 1\/3 of the biomass of an unfished stock.\u00a0 So these big reef fish are not just overfished, at 1\/1500th<\/sup> the biomass they are grossly overfished and approaching local extinction.\u00a0 Modern fisheries science has tended to adopt a slightly more restrictive overfishing limit of \u201cOptimum Yield.\u201d (OY).\u00a0 While OY is not defined exactly, it is a fish catch that is less than MSY to allow for uncertainties in the data and models, and high variability in annual recruitment of new fish.\u00a0 In addition, if there are deleterious ecosystem effects of fishing, OY would be set to a lower level of fishing to avoid those effects.\u00a0 But no matter how you slice it, these big reef fish are grossly overfished.\u00a0 Overfishing benefits no one, including the fishermen, who can catch more on a sustainable basis if they fish less (at MSY).\u00a0 But each individual fisherman would catch more and make more profit in the short term if they were allowed to fish more, hence fishermen often push to be allowed to fish more than would be beneficial for them in the long term or for society as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A recent report from Australia reports that while the Cocos-Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean (owned by Australia) which have no fishing, have abundant sharks, sharks are much less abundant on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in areas open to fishing (which until recently was most of the reef)\u00a0 (Robbins et al. 2006).\u00a0 In the few little areas of the GBR where people are not allowed to go, sharks are abundant like in Cocos-Keeling.\u00a0 Surprisingly, in areas where fishing is not allowed but people can go, sharks are in low abundance similar to in areas where fishing is allowed.\u00a0 Apparently, people are poaching sharks in no-take MPAs, and only no-go areas provide enough protection.\u00a0 The authors were able to measure the rate at which sharks are declining on the GBR, and it is rapid.\u00a0 Fishing in Queensland (where the GBR is) is controlled by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, which so far has refused to tighten up shark fishing regulations, and claims it is well regulated.\u00a0 The facts show otherwise for reef sharks.\u00a0 The story is going around that fishermen who fish for coral cod (grouper) on the GBR and who make quite a bit of money off that, do not like to pull up just the head of a coral cod that a shark has eaten while it was on their line.\u00a0 So they deliberately catch sharks, kill them, and throw them back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robbins et al. (2006) wrote,<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cOur data suggest that for coral-reef sharks, immediate and substantial reductions in shark fishing will be required for their ongoing collapse to be reversed.\u201d
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201dTogether, these findings indicate that extirpation of these species from fished coral-reef ecosystems is an immanent likelihood in the absence of substantial changes to coral-reef management.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cInferred and projected declines such as ours appear sufficient to warrant \u201cCritically Endangered\u201d status under the IUCN Red List (A3d) criteria for this study area for both species.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cMoreover, the magnitude of the population decline is severe: Median rates of population decline are 7% per annum for whitetip reef sharks and 17% for grey reef sharks.\u00a0 If current population trends continue unabated, the abundance of whitetip reef sharks and grey reef sharks present on legally fished reefs will be reduced to only 5% and 0.1% respectively, of their present-day no-entry abundance levels within 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe minimum change in mortality necessary to produce a median estimated population growth rate of 1.0 (i.e., population stability) was calculated for each species.\u00a0 Analyses indicate that reductions in annual mortality by one-third (36%) for the whitetip shark and one half (49%) for the gray reef shark would be required to halt these ongoing declines.\u00a0 However, with commercial catches of sharks nearly quadrupling on the Great Barrier Reef between 1994 and 2003, and recreational fishing also removing large numbers of sharks in Australia, the trend is strongly in the opposite direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cFor instance, on coral reefs, food-web models indicate that trophic cascades initiated by overfishing of sharks may have contributed to the collapse of Caribbean coral-reef ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The renowned coral reef scientist, J.E.N. \u201cCharlie\u201d Veron writes,<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first worked on the Great Barrier Reef, I always felt a moment of anxiety after rolling backwards off the side of a boat to go for a dive. We all felt that. We waited for the bubbles to clear just to make sure that there wasn’t a big tiger among the sharks that always gathered around. Now, anywhere in the Asian region, I swim long distances over deep water without the slightest concern, for there are virtually no sharks left, big or small. I haven’t even seen big fish in any numbers around an Asian reef in years. The plight of sharks is symptomatic of what is happening to reefs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The vulnerability of sharks is highlighted in this quote from Nichols (1993):<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSharks possess particular biological characteristics which render then especially susceptible to high fishing pressure, and as such, qualify them as a special case for management. \u00a0As apex predators, they have few natural enemies.\u00a0 The biological characteristics of sharks \u2013 long lived, slow growth rates, low fecundity and reproductive rates (some species do not reproduce every year), long gestation period, relatively large size at first spawning, and strongly density dependent recruitment \u2013 result in shark fisheries being particularly sensitive to over-fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Knowlton and Jackson (2008) wrote,<\/p>\n

“The areas of biggest concern for the immediate future are apex predators at the top, because they are globally so rare, and corals at the bottom, because of their continuing decline, apparent vulnerability to even modest local human impacts, and extreme sensitivity to all aspects of global change. Both risk extinctions if nothing is done to halt their global downward trajectories.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 McKleod et al. (2005) wrote,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key interactions among species within an ecosystem are essential to maintain if ecosystem services are to be delivered.\u00a0 Removing or damaging some species can dramatically affect others and disrupt the ability of the system to provide desired services.\u00a0 Small changes to these key interactions can produce large ecosystem responses.\u00a0 For example, the absence of large-bodied predators at the apex of marine food webs can result in large-scale changes in the relative abundances of other species.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Humphead wrasse, also called Napoleon wrasse and Maori wrasse (Chelinus undulatus<\/em>) are threatened by fishing similar to sharks.\u00a0 These fish grow to be giants, up to 2.3 meters long (7 feet) and 191 kg (420 pounds), so more massive than most reef sharks.\u00a0 They are found in the Indo-Pacific, and feed mainly on shelled invertebrates.\u00a0 They are taken in the live food fish trade from an expanding area that covers much of the western Pacific, and sold in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where they fetch amazingly high prices.\u00a0 Because huge numbers are taken in the life food fish trade (the trade is worth around US$1 billion per year), they have been put on the CITES list, which is to protect them from international trade that would deplete them.\u00a0 But they are also taken by local fishers wherever there are people.\u00a0 Their abundance is inversely correlated with the abundance of people- where the human population is greatest they are nearly absent, but where there are no people or fishing is not allowed, they are most abundant.\u00a0 The Phoenix Islands and Wake Island (a U.S. military base) have some of the most abundant populations known (Sadovy et al. 2003).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum<\/em>) are another large reef fish that lives in the Indo-Pacific.\u00a0 They grow to 1.3 m (4 feet) long and 46 kg (101 pounds).\u00a0 They eat coral and algae, and commonly travel in schools of 30-50.\u00a0 On the Great Barrier Reef, they are most common near the reef crest at the northern end of the reef, though they also extend to the southern end.\u00a0 At night they sleep in the same schools, either in the open or in holes that are not large enough for them to completely fit into.\u00a0 They tend to sleep in the same area each night.\u00a0 As a result, they are particularly easy to spear at night with a flashlight and SCUBA.\u00a0 A fisher that finds where a school sleeps can return night after night to the same spot and spear them until the entire school has been extirpated.\u00a0 Populations once again are inversely related to human populations, with low populations where there are lots of people and many more where there are no people (Bellwood et al. 2003).\u00a0 C. Birkeland and G. Davis report that big schools of bumphead parrots were common in Guam in the 1960\u2019s, but they were spearfished out in the 1970\u2019s, and now they are rare.\u00a0 In Fiji, interviews with people revealed that when night time SCUBA spearfishing came to an island, the markets were filled with bumphead parrots, they were half or more of all fish in the markets.\u00a0 Now, in those same areas, they are rare and not seen in the markets.\u00a0 On some islands they have actually gone locally extinct (Dulvy and Polunin, 2004).\u00a0 In the Solomon Islands, in some areas they currently dominate markets, and areas near people populations have decreased and fishers go farther to find more abundant populations farther from people (Aswani and Hamilton, 2004). \u00a0\u00a0Professor Howard Choat reports that a small group of spearfishers can fill a large skiff with them in a single night.\u00a0 It appears that bumphead parrots are particularly vulnerable to being extirpated by fishing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Giant groupers (Epinephelus lanceolatus<\/em>) in the Pacific (also called Queensland groupers in Australia) can get to well over 2.7 meters (8 feet) long and 300 kg (660 pounds).\u00a0 They appear to be rare everywhere, including reefs without people.\u00a0 However, the equivalent species in the Caribbean, the goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara<\/em>), which can get to at least 2.4 m (7 feet) and 310 kg (682 pounds, and possibly 455 kg or 1001 pounds!), is a different story.\u00a0 Although they are rare in the Caribbean, in Florida there are pictures of the trophy catches from tourist fishing boats called \u201cheadboats\u201d that paint a different picture.\u00a0 The old photos show lots of huge goliath grouper, sometimes a whole row of them, from a single day\u2019s fishing by one tour boat.\u00a0 Today, the photo of the trophy board is likely to have mostly smaller fish than that.\u00a0 But goliaths have been protected in the Florida Keys since 1990.\u00a0 Now if you dive there, you have a good chance of seeing a juvenile, maybe 3 feet and 100 pounds.\u00a0 Under protection, their numbers are increasing rapidly, though it will be some time until the giant sizes are reached.\u00a0 Meantime, some fishing companies have discovered that there are fishers who find it extremely exciting to hook a huge fish, even if the hook is barbless and the fish is released.\u00a0 So there are tour companies that specialize in catch and release fishing for goliath grouper (see\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.floridalighttacklecharters.com\/gallery_extremefishing.htm<\/a>).\u00a0 Meantime, problems are appearing.\u00a0 There are catch and release fisheries for other fish as well.\u00a0 When these smaller fish are released, goliaths and sharks quickly learn that the fish that is released is dazed and up in the water where there is no hiding place.\u00a0 So goliaths and sharks hang around some fishing boats and zoom in and eat the newly released fish.\u00a0 This does not please the fishers, they want to be able to catch them again.\u00a0 There are rumors of fishers catching sharks and\/or goliaths and taking them off somewhere and killing them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fishing has long been known to usually remove the big fish first (e.g., Jennings et al. 1999; Dulvy et al. 2004).\u00a0 The incentive is for a fisher to go for the big ones, more to feed your family, or more to sell.\u00a0 It is usually more profitable to take the big fish (though there are specific fisheries for small fish, such as anchovies, herrings, and sardines if large numbers can be found).\u00a0 You can even get a measure of fishing pressure by recording the sizes of fish present, the more fishing the fewer big ones (Kelly and Codling, 2006).\u00a0 Over decades, fishing can begin with the largest fish, then once they are depleted move to the next size fish, and so on down to the smallest that are still profitable.\u00a0 This is called \u201cFishing down the food web.\u201d (Pauly et al. 1998; Pauly and Palomares, 2005)\u00a0 Think of the size range for reef fish- if reefs in an area have 600 species of fish, how many are large enough that people fish them, and how many are so small no one would fish them?\u00a0 The most diverse families of fish on reefs are gobies and damselfish, and they are too small to be fished by any but the most desperately poor fishers.\u00a0 So at the small end of the range on reefs, there are huge numbers of species that are too small to be fished.\u00a0 At the large end of the size range, there are just a few species, which are highly prized catches.\u00a0 Trophy catches are the largest fish, not the smallest. \u00a0Fishing pressure increases with the size of the fish.\u00a0 In addition, the numbers of individuals in a species decreases with the increasing size of the species.\u00a0 There are huge numbers of damselfish on most reefs, but even on unfished pristine reefs where half of the biomass is large fish, there are many fewer sharks, bumphead parrots, humphead wrasse and giant grouper than damselfish.\u00a0 The most abundant fish species on reefs where it occurs is a surgeonfish that reaches just 26 cm length.\u00a0 All this is because the larger the size of the individual, the more it takes to feed them.\u00a0 A reef can feed vast numbers of damsels, but only a limited number of sharks, humpheads, bumpheads and giant grouper.\u00a0 So, big fish are less abundant than small fish, and more heavily fished.\u00a0 The result is that they are much more rapidly depleted than small fish. \u00a0There is now a quantitative measure of vulnerability of fishing, which incorporates a variety of things about fish that make them vulnerable to fishing (Cheung et al. 2007).\u00a0 There is a website with a wealth of information about all the different kinds of fish around the world, called \u201cFishBase\u201d (www.fishbase.org<\/a>).\u00a0 That website gives information on each species of fish.\u00a0 For each species, it now gives the \u201cvulnerability index.\u201d\u00a0 The index has a range from 0 for no vulnerability to 100 for maximum.\u00a0 Each of the different kinds of the largest reef fish, like sharks, humphead wrasse, bumphead parrots, and goliath grouper, all have vulnerabilities on the order of 75 (out of 100).\u00a0 Small fish have much lower vulnerabilities, often on the order of 25-35.\u00a0 The striped bristletooth (surgeon), Ctenochaetus striatus<\/em>, is one of the most abundant reef fish most places where it is found in the Indo-Pacific (Lieske and Myers, 2001).\u00a0 It has a vulnerability less than 14.\u00a0 The largest species of reef fish are highly sensitive to fishing, but the small fish are much more resistant to fishing, with the most abundant species being highly resistant.\u00a0 Sharks reproduce in a way that makes it particularly hard for them to recover quickly from fishing.\u00a0 Unlike bony fish, they produce a few large pups, instead of masses of tiny eggs.\u00a0 Reef sharks typically have about 1-5 pups, once a year or every other year.\u00a0 Thus, their ability to increase in population rapidly is extremely limited.\u00a0 By contrast large female reef fish can release millions of eggs a year.\u00a0 The probability of survival of a single tiny fish egg (likely about 1 mm or 1\/16 inch diameter) is minute compared to the probability of survival of a single shark pup.\u00a0 The larger the individual the better the chance of survival.\u00a0 But if conditions are just right, a large bony fish can have so many offspring survive they can replenish their population in one year, but that is quite impossible for a shark (or ray).\u00a0 Once depleted, large fish and sharks in particular, can be kept at low levels indefinitely by small amounts of fishing.\u00a0 Just the small amount of poaching in no-take areas on the GBR was enough to deplete the sharks there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fishing always removes fish, and almost always results in a decrease in fish abundance and biomass.\u00a0 The total biomass of fish on reefs is higher on more lightly fished reefs, and lower on more intensely fished reefs (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008). \u00a0Much of those differences come from the removal of the big fish (Birkeland and Friedlander, 2001).\u00a0 If only large predators are removed, then their prey can actually increase in abundance (Graham et al. 2003).\u00a0 However, in most cases smaller fish are taken as well as the large predators, and smaller fish decrease as well as the large fish, because although they are released from predation by predatory fish, they are taken in even larger numbers by predatory humans.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The degradation of coral reefs around the world has only been recently recognized, but it has been going on for a long time.\u00a0 Only recently have studies of near-pristine reefs and historical records shown how degraded most reefs are, and how long this has been going on.\u00a0 The historical studies confirm that the big fish were depleted before the small fish (Pandofi et al. 2003; 2005).\u00a0 There is even archeological data showing the decline of reef fish stocks before westerners arrived (Wing and Wing, 2001).\u00a0 On land, humans have been implicated in the extinction of large mammals and birds, which often disappeared about the time humans arrived on a continent such as North America.\u00a0 While the megafauna disappeared, the smaller species survived.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How much is a big fish worth in the fish market?\u00a0 A couple hundred dollars?\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot to a poor fisherman in a developing country.\u00a0 But how much can a dive operator charge to take a diver to see that fish alive on the reef?\u00a0 $50 or more?\u00a0 Divers go nuts over really big fish, they are so exciting.\u00a0 How about a boatload of divers?\u00a0 How about a boatload of divers every day?\u00a0 How much total money do those divers spend on hotel room, dining, car rental, and airfare?\u00a0 How many people are employed by all those businesses?\u00a0 A single, huge, famous fish can have divers spend over a million dollars a year to see it.\u00a0 Alive, that fish is made of solid gold.\u00a0 Dead, it\u2019s not worth much in comparison.\u00a0 Mind you, you have to be in an area where you can attract divers, but diving is much more sustainable than fishing, and the goose can go on laying the golden egg year after year.\u00a0 If the hotel and the dive operation are owned by people from developed countries, then the local people may get little benefit from the big fish in their own country.\u00a0 So I prefer to stay in locally owned hotels and go with local dive operators.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSave the Big Reef Fish!!\u201d\u00a0 Australia protects humphead wrasse, as does Niue.\u00a0 Palau has now protected all it sharks, plus its humphead wrasse and bumphead parrots.\u00a0 American Samoa has promised to protect all of its large reef fish species, including all sharks, humphead wrasse, bumphead parrots, giant grouper, and giant trevally.\u00a0 They will be illegal to take by any means, throughout the territory, at all times, for all sizes of those species, by anyone.\u00a0 They are being protected on the basis that they are uncommon or rare, and they are exploited, and thus there is a possibility that the exploitation could drive them into local extinction.\u00a0 It is much easier to demonstrate that a species is rare and exploited than to prove it is overfished, so this may be a rationale for protection that has wider applicability.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Aswani, S., and Hamilton, R. J.\u00a0 2004.\u00a0 Integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and customary sea tenure with marine and social science for conservation of bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum<\/em>) in the Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands.\u00a0 Environmental Conservation 31: 69-83.<\/p>\n

Bellwood, D. R., Hoey, A. S. and Choat, J. H.\u00a0 2003.\u00a0 Limited functional redundancy in high diversity systems: resilience and ecosystem function on coral reefs.\u00a0 Ecology Letters 6: 281-285.<\/p>\n

Birkeland, C. and Friedlander, A. M.\u00a0 2001.\u00a0 The importance of refuges for reef fish replenishment in Hawai\u2019i.\u00a0 Hawaii Audubon Society, 19 pp.<\/p>\n

Cheung, W. W. L., Watson, R., Morato, T., Pitcher, T. J., and D. Pauly.\u00a0 2007.\u00a0 Intrinsic vulnerability in the global fish catch.\u00a0 Marine Ecology Progress Series 333: 1-12.\u00a0 (an open access article)<\/p>\n

Dulvy, N. K., Polunin, N. V. C. 2004.\u00a0 Using informal knowledge to infer human-induced rarity of a conspicuous reef fish.\u00a0 Animal Conservation 7: 365-374.<\/p>\n

Dulvy, N. K., Polunin, N. V. C. 2004.\u00a0 Size structural change in lightly exploited coral reef fish communities: evidence for weak indirect effects.\u00a0 Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 61: 466-475.<\/p>\n

Friedlander, A. and De Martini, E. E.\u00a0 2002.\u00a0 Contrasts in density, size, and biomass of reef fishes between the northwestern and main Hawaiian Islands: effects of fishing down apex predators.\u00a0 Marine Ecology Progress Series 230: 253-264.<\/p>\n

Graham, N. A. J., Evans, R. D., and Russ, G. R.\u00a0 2003.\u00a0 The effects of marine reserve protection on the trophic relationships of reef fishes on the Great Barrier Reef.\u00a0 Environmental Conservation 20: 200-208.<\/p>\n

Kelly, C. J. and Codling, E. A.\u00a0 2006.\u00a0 \u2018Cheap and dirty\u2019 fisheries science and management in the North Atlantic.\u00a0 Fisheries Research 79: 233-238.<\/p>\n

Knowlton, N. and J. B. C. Jackson.\u00a0 2008.\u00a0 Shifting baselines, local impacts, and global change on coral reefs.\u00a0 PLoS Biology 6: 215-220.<\/p>\n

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Lieske, E. and Myers, R.\u00a0 2001.\u00a0 Coral reef fishes.\u00a0 Princeton University Press.\u00a0 400pp.<\/p>\n

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Nichols, P. V.\u00a0 1993.\u00a0 Chapter 9: Sharks.\u00a0 Pages 285-327 in Wright, A., and Hill, L. (eds)\u00a0 Nearshore marine resources of the South Pacific, information for fisheries development and management.\u00a0 Institute of Pacific Studies, Suva; Forum Fisheries Agency, Honiara; International Centre for Ocean Development, Canada.<\/p>\n

Pala, C.\u00a0 2007.\u00a0 Life on the mean reefs.\u00a0 Science 318: 1719.<\/p>\n

Pandolfi, J. M., Bradbury, R. H., Saia, E., Hughes, T. P., Bjorndal, K. A., Cooke, R. G., McArdle, D., McClenachan, L., Newman, M., Paredes, G., Warner, R. R., Jackson, J. B. C.\u00a0 2003.\u00a0 Global trajectories of the long-term decline of coral reef ecosystems.\u00a0 Science 301: 955-958.<\/p>\n

Pandolfi, J. M., Jackson, J. B. C., Baron, N., Bradbury, R. H., Guzman, H. M., et al. 2005.\u00a0 Are US coral reefs on the slippery slope to slime?\u00a0 Science 307: 1725-1726.<\/p>\n

Pauly, D., V. Christensen, J. Dalsgaard, R. Froese, and F. Torres, Jr.\u00a0 1998.\u00a0 Fishing down marine food webs.\u00a0 Science 279: 860-863.<\/p>\n

Pauly, D., Palomares, M-L.\u00a0 2005.\u00a0 Fishing down marine food web: it is far more pervasive than we thought.\u00a0 Bulletin of Marine Science 76: 197-211.<\/p>\n

Robbins, W. D., Hizano, M., Connolly, S. R., J. H. Choat.\u00a0 2006.\u00a0 Ongoing collapse of coral-reef shark populations.\u00a0 Current Biology 16: 2314-2319.<\/p>\n

Sadovy, Y., Kulbicki, M., Labrosse, P., Letourneur, Y., Lokani, P., Donaldson, T. J.\u00a0 2003.\u00a0 The humphead wrasse, Cheilinus undulatus<\/em>: synopsis of a threatened and poorly known giant coral reef fish.\u00a0 Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 13: 327-364.<\/p>\n

Sandin, S., A., Smith, J. E., DeMartini, E. E., Dinsdale, E. A., Donner, S. D., Friedlander, A. M., Konotchick, T., Malay, M., Maragos, J. E., Obura, D., Pantos, O., Paulay, G., Richie, M., Rohwer, M., Schroeder, R. E., Walsh, S., Jackson, J. B. C., Knowlton, N., Sala, E.\u00a0 2008.\u00a0 Baselines and degradation of coral reefs in the Northern Line Islands.\u00a0 PLOS One 3(2): 1-11.<\/p>\n

Sheppard, C.\u00a0 1995.\u00a0 The shifting baseline syndrome.\u00a0 Marine Pollution Bulletin 30: 766-767.<\/p>\n

Stevenson, C., Katz, L. S., Micheli, L. F., Block, B., Heiman, K. W., Perle, C., Weng, K., Dunbar, R., Witting, J.\u00a0 2006.\u00a0 High apex predator biomass on remote Pacific Islands.\u00a0 Coral Reefs 26: 47-51.<\/p>\n

Wing, S.R. and Wing, E. S.\u00a0 2001.\u00a0 Prehistoric fisheries in the Caribbean.\u00a0 Coral Reefs 20: 1-8.<\/p>\n

Special thanks to Doug Fenner<\/p>\n

Figure 1.\u00a0 Reef fish community composition in Hawaii.\u00a0 There are very few humans in the NW Hawaiian Islands, and many in the main Hawaiian Islands.\u00a0 Redrawn from Birkeland and Friedlander (2001).<\/p>\n

Figure 2.\u00a0 Composition of reef fish communities on islands in the Line Islands.\u00a0 Fishing is heaviest at Christmas and lightest at Palmyra.\u00a0 Redrawn from Stevenson et al. 2006.<\/p>\n

Figure 3.\u00a0 Abundance of humphead wrasse as a function of human population density.\u00a0 Redrawn from Sadovy et al. (2003).<\/p>\n

Figure 4.\u00a0 Abundance of bumphead parrotfish as a function of human population density.\u00a0 Based on Bellwood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.sharksavers.org\/en\/education\/sharks-are-in-trouble\/399-loss-of-large-fish-on-coral-reefs.html Here’s an updated version of the post above, provided by Dr. Fenner: The Largest Fish on Coral Reefs were the First to Go.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you\u2019ve got \u2018till it\u2019s gone,\u201d as we\u2019re only now finding out. Douglas Fenner, Ph.D. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many reef scientists (including the author) have spent their entire careers diving … Continue reading The Loss of Large Fish on Coral Reefs by Doug Fenner, Ph.D.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}