Working with, not against, coral-reef fisheries

Abstract

The fisheries policies of some Pacific island nations are more appropriate to the biology of their resources than are some of the fisheries policies of more industrialized countries. Exclusive local ownership of natural resources in Palau encourages adjustive management on biologically relevant scales of time and space and promotes responsibility by reducing the tragedy of the commons. The presence of large individuals in fish populations and adequate size of spawning aggregations are more efficient and meaningful cues for timely management than are surveys of abundance or biomass. Taking fish from populations more than halfway to their carrying capacity is working favorably with the fishery because removing fish potentially increases resource stability by negative feedback between stock size and population production. Taking the same amount of fish from a population below half its carrying capacity is working against the fishery, making the population unstable, because reducing the reproductive stock potentially accelerates reduction of the population production by positive feedback. Reef fish are consumed locally, while Palauan laws ban the export of reef resources. This is consistent with the high gross primary production with little excess net production from undisturbed coral-reef ecosystems. The relatively rapid growth rates, short life spans, reliable recruitment and wide-ranging movements of open-ocean fishes such as scombrids make them much more productive than coral-reef fishes. The greater fisheries yield per square kilometer in the open ocean multiplied by well over a thousand times the area of the exclusive economic zone than that of Palau's coral reefs should encourage Palauans to keep reef fishes for subsistence and to feed tourists open-ocean fishes. Fisheries having only artisanal means should be encouraged to increase the yield and sustainability by moving away from coral reefs to bulk harvesting of nearshore pelagics.

Patterns in artisanal coral reef fisheries revealed through local monitoring efforts

“…Local fisheries management that is driven and informed by traditional knowledge has been shown to be effective in certain locations in Hawai‘i, as well as other locations in the Pacific ( Poepoe, Bartram & Friedlander, 2005 ; Friedlander, Shackeroff & Kittinger, 2013 ; Severance et al, 2013 ; Levine & Richmond, 2014 ; Birkeland, 2017 ). A diverse range of management options needs to be developed through a collaborative approach.…”

Recruitment dynamics and fishery characteristics of juvenile goatfishes Mulloidichthys spp. in Hawai‘i

“…Furthermore, their benthic‐phase life history is characterised by a relatively short mean lifespan (5–6 years) and an early onset (by age 1) of reproductive maturity (Nadon, ). These benthic‐phase life‐history traits are more characteristic of nearshore pelagic species and distinguishes them from most coral‐reef fish species targeted by island fisheries (Birkeland, ).…”

“…These benthic-phase life-history traits are more characteristic of nearshore pelagic species and distinguishes them from most coral-reef fish species targeted by island fisheries (Birkeland, 2017).…”

Co-evolution of “race-to-fish” dynamics and declining size structures in an expanding commercial coral-reef fishery

“…Subsistence coral-reef fisheries were historically managed through small-scale reef tenure systems that intertwined many principles of fisheries management into tradition and culture, generally providing for sustainable harvesting regimes (Johannes 1978;Mcclenachan and Kittinger 2013;Birkeland 2017). In contrast, the development of commercial coral-reef fisheries and fisheries technology over the second half of the twentieth century removed key links between management and society, often resulting in fisheries depletions (Cuetos-Bueno and Houk 2014;Pauly and Zeller 2014;Houk et al 2018b;Rhodes et al 2018).…”