Do reef fish assemblages benefit from a marine protected area in the north Pacific coast of Costa Rica?

Long-distance movements associated with environmental and ecological drivers are common in a wide array of mobile marine species. Understanding such movements and associated drivers is particularly important for management and conservation of threatened species, which may be exposed to anthropogenic threats throughout their range. Pacific nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma unami) are endangered because of their interactions with fisheries and a lack of biological knowledge as a recently described species. Little is known about this species’ movements throughout its broad distribution in the tropical Pacific coast of Latin America. Using passive acoustic telemetry, we report the longest ranging movement so far observed for Pacific nurse sharks. A male individual, measuring 176-cm total length at the time of tagging, travelled over 390 km within 46 days along the North Pacific coastline of Costa Rica. These findings highlight the importance of collaboration and data exchange among researchers to enable monitoring of broader geographical ranges and provide critical insight into the movement capabilities of this endangered species. Defining marine corridors and identifying essential habitats for Pacific nurse sharks may be necessary to mitigate fishing-related impacts if these longer distance movements are common across their population.

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Historical marine ecology using non-traditional data sources reveals the impact of local and global processes over half a century

Turnbull,

Booth,

Vergés

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Human impacts on earth span centuries, yet scientific studies cover a fraction of this time. Historical records and citizen scientist data are a useful resource for the long-term studies needed to understand and respond to pressures on nature, yet their quality and validity have been challenged. To explore how such non-traditional sources can be used to understand historical ecological change, we studied a site (Shiprock) with long-term citizen science activity in the Sydney, Australia region. We analysed approximately 6000 taxonomic records and reports revealing substantial ecological changes between 1965 and 2020, including the local disappearance of some fish and invertebrate species and declines in the abundance of many taxa including kelp. We found indications of potential range extensions more frequently from the north than the south, consistent with patterns expected from the global processes of climate change. We compared the relative advantages and limitations of the two main citizen science data collection modes: structured surveys and opportunistic presence records. Structured surveys provided broadly scientifically useful ecological information including species richness, populations, community structure and temporal change. Opportunistic data had the potential to provide long-term retrospective community information and species presence, but were limited in the ability to provide species absence, biomass, populations, community structure and coverage of remote areas. Our study allowed the development of scientifically- and managerially-relevant insights encompassing foundation, threatened, protected and invasive species, community shifts and the impacts of local and global processes over historical timescales.

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Do reef fish assemblages benefit from a marine protected area in the north Pacific coast of Costa Rica?

Cited by 4 publications

References 88 publications

Baited rather than unbaited stereo-video provides robust metrics to assess demersal fish assemblages across deeper coastal shelf marine parks

Baited rather than unbaited stereo-video provides robust metrics to assess demersal fish assemblages across deeper coastal shelf marine parks

Long-distance dispersal of the endangered Pacific nurse shark (Ginglymostoma unami, Orectolobiformes) in Costa Rica revealed through acoustic telemetry

Historical marine ecology using non-traditional data sources reveals the impact of local and global processes over half a century

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