Effective co-management and long-term reef fish recovery from severe coral bleaching: Insights from Misali Island, PECCA, Tanzania

The unrealized potential of community science to support research on the resilience of protected areas

“…Two papers used atlas data collected by community scientists but without mentioning that this is how the data was collected; these papers were focused on climate and connectivity (Virkkala, Heikkinen, Kuusela, Leikola, & Pöyry, 2019) and biodiversity and resource management (Huggett, 2005). An additional study by Jones, Levine, and Jiddawi (2019) was designed to be easily compared to several previous studies, one of which used community science data; however, data quality issues were cited when the community science data contradicted the results of the studies using professionally collected data (Jones et al, 2019). The term “community science” was never mentioned in any document within our corpus.…”

Evaluating effects of partial fishing closures on the composition and structure of estuarine fish assemblages

“…Previous studies in the southern sector (i.e., Misali Island) point to relatively healthy habitats and fish diversity but a disproportionately decreased abundance and diversity of large reef-associated predators (Grimsditch et al, 2009;Jones et al, 2019;Osuka et al, 2021a). Indeed, in 2017, estimates of species richness drawn from six families: Carangidae, Epinephelinae, Lethrinidae, Lutjanidae, Carcharhinidae and Sphyraenidae at Misali stood at 15 species, down from 46 species in 2004 (Daniels et al, 2004;Jones et al, 2019). In combination these studies suggest overfishing may have worsened in recent decades.…”

“…The outer reefs of Pemba Island have been little surveyed to date, likely due to logistical challenges associated with sampling deeper reefs with standard SCUBA underwater visual censuses. Indeed, previous ecological fish surveys conducted in Pemba Island were restricted to depths <21m and conducted either on SCUBA (e.g., Daniels et al, 2003;Grimsditch et al, 2009) or snorkel (e.g., Jones et al, 2019). The results from these studies lacked consensus on the diversity of reef predators.…”