An international team of researchers has used an extensive dataset of more than 2,000 coral reef sites to determine how fish populations and diversity of fish species are faring on the world’s ocean reefs. One finding of the study, recently published in Nature Communications, is that nearly two-thirds of the sites studied are overfished below reference points aimed at maximizing catch.
Fishing has been going on in coral reefs for thousands of years. As a richly structured and particularly biodiverse ecosystem, reefs provide a habitat for a number of fish species—including many edible fish. In most cases, traditional artisanal fishing is practiced by the inhabitants of the reef atolls or coasts fringed by reefs. The catch is largely traded informally, bartered or consumed by the people themselves.
This scenario conjures up images of a way of life in harmony with nature. But how sustainable are global coral reef fisheries really and what is the state of fish stocks in coral reefs? Due to the artisanal and rather informal nature of the fishery, the data on this is very scarce. In particular, there is a lack of time series, which are typically used to assess the status of a fishery.
An international team led by Jessica Zamborain-Mason of Harvard University and including reef ecologist Sebastian Ferse of the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) used a new approach to determine the status of fish populations and species diversity in the world’s coral reefs based on an extensive dataset of fish observations.
It is estimated that around six million people are involved in reef fisheries worldwide. Catch from reefs accounts for a significant proportion of total marine fisheries in many regions, the highest being in the Middle East with 43% and the Caribbean with 40%. Reefs provide a great wealth of catchable fish species: snappers, groupers, rabbitfish, parrotfish, wrasses, and surgeonfish are just a few examples.
2023-09-06 12:00:04
Source from phys.org