Measurement of the rate of depletion of benthic fauna by prawn (shrimp) otter trawls: an experiment in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Burridge, Charis Y.; Pitcher, C. Roland; Wassenberg, T.J.; Poiner, I. R.; Hill, B. J.

doi:10.1016/s0165-7836(02)00179-0

Cited by 44 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Four passes of their gear depleted the density of such organisms by about half. Burridge et al (2003) found similar rates of depletion of some taxa when a prawn trawl was towed through areas of sponges, gorgonians and hard corals, at 20 to 35 m depth, in channels amidst the Great Barrier Reef. Since Freese et al (1999) worked in such a different environment from the 2 Australian teams, the contrast between all of their results and those reported here seems likely due to differences in the epibenthic assemblages, rather than depth, substrate type, or water temperature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Impacts of otter trawling on colonial epifaunal assemblages on a cobble bottom ecosystem on Western Bank (northwest Atlantic)

Henry¹,

Kenchington²,

Kenchington³

et al. 2006

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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Colonial epifauna are an important component of benthic communities, providing structural complexity at scales of millimetres to metres. Many are sessile, emergent and fragilecharacteristics which render them vulnerable to disturbances associated with bottom fishing. Many also have impressive abilities to rapidly regenerate both sexually and asexually and, consequently, the ultimate results of impacts of physical disturbance are difficult to predict. We analysed the effects of 3 yr of pulsed experimental otter trawling, following an asymmetrical before-after-control-impact design, on grab-sampled colonial epifauna. Our study site was on a cobble seabed on the Scotian Shelf in a formerly important fishing ground which had seen no disturbance by mobile fishing gears for 10 yr. The number of taxa, total biomass, the biomass of component major taxa (hydroids, bryozoans, sponges, tunicates, soft corals) and the community composition were analysed for single-year and cumulative effects. The study site had a rich colonial fauna containing at least 53 taxa, the majority of which were hydroids. The small vase sponge Scypha ciliata, the leafy bryozoans Dendrobeania spp. and the hydroids Symplectoscyphus spp. were the most frequent, occurring in > 70% of the samples. Significant inter-annual differences at control sites were observed. The number of taxa, total biomass and hydroid biomass increased over the study period, with associated changes in community composition. Short-term effects of trawling were detected as decreases in the number of taxa per sample, total biomass and total hydroid biomass across the trawling events, although these trends were non-significant after Bonferroni adjustment. No cumulative effects from the pulsed trawling were detected, and colonial species assemblages on control and impacted lines were similar at the end of the experiment. While some of the tests for trawling effects were statistically weak, it is certain that any effects were small relative to natural inter-annual change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Impacts of otter trawling on colonial epifaunal assemblages on a cobble bottom ecosystem on Western Bank (northwest Atlantic)

Henry¹,

Kenchington²,

Kenchington³

et al. 2006

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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“…Bishop et al (2000) investigated the impact of technology on vessel performance in a trawl fishery during 1988-96 by using a generalized estimating equation. Burridge et al (2003) investigated trawl-depletion rate for benthic fauna in an area closed to commercial trawling. In this paper we detect the effect of trawling through changes of weight distribution, the equilibrium distribution of a stochastic growth model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Ecological Disturbances to Seabed Fauna through Change of Weight Distribution

Naka

Shibata

Darnell

2012

JJSS

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The effect of trawling on seabed fauna in the Northern Prawn Fishery experimental region of Australia is investigated through distributional changes in individual weights for each species. A stochastic growth model is employed to overcome a limited number of effective observations. One statistical challenge is to deal with non-identically distributed observations as only total weights and numbers of individuals caught for each species are observed. A modified Cramér-von Mises statistic is introduced and the p -values are evaluated by random number generation. As a result, the gamma distribution, the equilibrium distribution of the stochastic growth model fits well to 57 out of 80 cases before trawling. We conclude that most of the species are unaffected by trawling but several other species are shifted towards lighter weights. The unevenness of the effect over regions suggests that other environmental effects and ecological factors are involved.

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“…30 (Michael, 2005), (Malik and Mayer, 2007), (Biasi, 2004;Simpson and Watling, 2006), (Duineveld et al, 2007), (Burridge et al, 2002), (megafaunal benthic communities) (Kaiser et al,. 1998) .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A primary study on the effect of artificial disturbance on a fishing area by shrimp beam trawl

Cha¹,

Yoon²,

Jung³

et al. 2009

Bulletin of the Korean society of Fisheries Technology

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It has been considered that fishing areas for shrimp beam trawl have been in ruin because Korean local governments have permitted trawling into the areas limited by the fisheries local regulations from 1994.Physical and biological effects of the trawling were investigated in the study. Physical effects were investigated by optical methods such as trawling tracking by side scan sonar and comparing the gear both before and after trawling. Biological aspects were investigated by grab sampling of benthic animals, concentration of trace metals in sediment and a flux evaluation of NH4 + , PO4 , and SiO2 by coring. The fishing activity had physical impacts on the seabed but these recovered naturally in less than fourty days naturally, which increased the benthic biodiversity, increases the trace metal concentration of and nutrient flux into the seawater, especially phosphate and silicate. This method and these results can help in further studies looking for disturbances by fishing.

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Measurement of the rate of depletion of benthic fauna by prawn (shrimp) otter trawls: an experiment in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Cited by 44 publications

References 17 publications

Impacts of otter trawling on colonial epifaunal assemblages on a cobble bottom ecosystem on Western Bank (northwest Atlantic)

Impacts of otter trawling on colonial epifaunal assemblages on a cobble bottom ecosystem on Western Bank (northwest Atlantic)

Detection of Ecological Disturbances to Seabed Fauna through Change of Weight Distribution

A primary study on the effect of artificial disturbance on a fishing area by shrimp beam trawl

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