Mobile fishing gear reduces benthic megafaunal production on Georges Bank

Hermsen, Jerome; Collie, Jeremy S.; Valentine, Page C.

doi:10.3354/meps260097

Cited by 71 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Veale et al 2000, Jennings et al 2001b, Kenchington et al 2001, Thrush et al 2001, Hermsen et al 2003. Here, we found a significant negative relationship between trawling and production of the whole infaunal community.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Effects of fishing disturbance on benthic communities and secondary production within an intensively fished area

Reiss¹,

Greenstreet²,

Sieben³

et al. 2009

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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Demersal fishing alters seabed habitats and affects the structure and functioning of benthic invertebrate communities. At a critical level of disturbance, such communities may approach an equilibrium disturbed state in which a further increase in disturbance has little additional impact. Such arguments have been used to suggest that an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM) should protect lightly fished areas and deflect fishing activity into areas that are already intensively fished. In this study, the effects of variation in fishing disturbance on the secondary production, species diversity, abundance, biomass, and community structure of benthic infauna were examined in a region of the German Bight (North Sea) that has been intensively trawled for decades. Variation in fishing disturbance across the study area was determined using automated position registration and vessel monitoring through satellite. Even in such a heavily fished area, linear regression analyses revealed that biomass, species richness, and production decreased significantly with increasing fishing intensity. Although redundancy analyses (RDA) showed that sediment characteristics were influential in determining the structure of the infauna community, partial RDA revealed that fishing continued to have an impact on community structure in terms of biomass. These results suggest that, in implementing an EAFM, managers will need to consider the possibility that, even in areas with high chronic fishing disturbance, further increases in fishing activity may still cause additional damage to benthic invertebrate communities.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Effects of fishing disturbance on benthic communities and secondary production within an intensively fished area

Reiss¹,

Greenstreet²,

Sieben³

et al. 2009

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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“…Thus the shift to greater planktonic intake may be in part the result of changes in fishing pressure. An alternative, or additional, explanation is that the increased intensity of bottom trawling, combined with greater technology (NRC, 2002;Hermsen et al, 2003) has depleted the suspension feeding epibenthos that are significant consumers of primary production as well as competitors with the plankton.…”

Section: Results Of Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the northern edge of the Bank, there has been a marked increase in benthic biomass within the area closed to fishing since 1994 (Hermsen et al, 2003). Here, biomass and production are partitioned into suspension and deposit feeding benthos for inclusion in the energy budget (Table 10).…”

Section: Benthic Faunamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For a few cases in which the same stations have been sampled repetitively over time, the production of scallops (Hermsen et al, 2003), amphipods, and sand dollars has been estimated with the growth-increment method. Hynes size-frequency method was used to estimate production from samples having size-frequency data but insufficient numbers to follow cohorts (Hermsen et al, 2003). Steimle (1987) used literature values of P:B ratios to estimate benthic production on the Bank.…”

Section: Benthic Faunamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Balancing end-to-end budgets of the Georges Bank ecosystem

Steele

Collie

Bisagni

et al. 2007

Progress in Oceanography

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Oceanographic regimes on the continental shelf display a great range in the time scales of physical exchange, biochemical processes and trophic transfers. The close surface-to-seabed physical coupling at intermediate scales of weeks to months means that the open ocean simplification to a purely pelagic food web is inadequate. Top-down trophic depictions, starting from the fish populations, are insufficient to constrain a system involving extensive nutrient recycling at lower trophic levels and subject to physical forcing as well as fishing. These pelagicbenthic interactions are found on all continental shelves but are particularly important on the relatively shallow Georges Bank in the northwest Atlantic. We have generated budgets for the 1 lower food web for three physical regimes (well mixed, transitional and stratified) and for three seasons (spring, summer and fall/winter). The calculations show that vertical mixing and lateral exchange between the three regimes are important for zooplankton production as well as for nutrient input. Benthic suspension feeders are an additional critical pathway for transfers to higher trophic levels. Estimates of production by mesozooplankton, benthic suspension feeders and deposit feeders, derived primarily from data collected during the GLOBEC years of 1995-1999, provide input to an upper food web. Diets of commercial fish populations are used to calculate food requirements in three fish categories, planktivores, benthivores and piscivores, for four decades, 1963-2002, between which there were major changes in the fish communities.Comparisons of inputs from the lower web with fish energetic requirements for plankton and benthos indicate that we obtained reasonable agreement for the last three decades, 1973 to 2002.However, for the first decade, the fish food requirements were significantly less than the inputs. This decade, 1963This decade, -1972, corresponds to a period characterized by a strong Labrador Current and lower nitrate levels at the shelf edge, demonstrating how strong bottom-up physical forcing may determine overall fish yields.

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“…Recoveries in benthos and benthic habitats were also observed (Hermsen et al, 2003;Lindholm et al, 2004;Asch et al, 2008). A contrasting example is the Plaice Box (PB), an area in the North Sea that was partly closed to large (> 221kW) beam trawlers to reduce discarding of undersized plaice Pleuronectes platessa L since 1989 (Figure 1).…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 86%

Evaluating the effect of fishery closures: Lessons learnt from the Plaice Box

Beare

Rijnsdorp

Blaesberg

et al. 2013

Journal of Sea Research

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Marieke, Evaluating the effect of fishery closures: Lessons learnt from the Plaice Box, Journal of Sea Research (2013Research ( ), doi: 10.1016Research ( /j.seares.2013 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

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Mobile fishing gear reduces benthic megafaunal production on Georges Bank

Cited by 71 publications

References 31 publications

Effects of fishing disturbance on benthic communities and secondary production within an intensively fished area

Effects of fishing disturbance on benthic communities and secondary production within an intensively fished area

Balancing end-to-end budgets of the Georges Bank ecosystem

Evaluating the effect of fishery closures: Lessons learnt from the Plaice Box

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