Bumphead Parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) Status Review

The mission of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment and to conserve and manage coastal and oceanic marine resources and habitats to help meet our Nation's economic, social, and environmental needs. As a branch of NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) conducts or sponsors research and monitoring programs to improve the scientific basis for conservation and management decisions. NMFS strives to make information about the purpose, methods, and results of its scientific studies widely available. NMFS' Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) uses the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS series to achieve timely dissemination of scientific and technical information that is of high quality but inappropriate for publication in the formal peer-reviewed literature. The contents are of broad scope, including technical workshop proceedings, large data compilations, status reports and reviews, lengthy scientific or statistical monographs, and more. NOAA Technical Memoranda published by the PIFSC, although informal, are subjected to extensive review and editing and reflect sound professional work. Accordingly, they may be referenced in the formal scientific and technical literature. received a petition from WildEarth Guardians requesting that the bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) be listed as endangered or threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). NMFS reviewed the petition, decided that the petition presented adequate scientific or commercial information indicating that an ESA listing may be warranted, and committed to conducting an ESA status review. NMFS formed a Biological Review Team (BRT; Team) made up of federal scientists to compile the best available scientific and commercial information and assess the status of the species. This document reports the results of this compilation and assessment. The BRT qualitatively assessed the severity, geographic scope, and level of certainty of potential individual threats to bumphead parrotfish. Because the severity and scope of individual threats may change over time, each threat was evaluated based on its historical impact, its current impact, and its future potential for impact. Additionally, synergistic cumulative impacts were considered. The factors that are believed to have had the greatest potential to contribute to the decline of bumphead parrotfish are overharvesting, loss of juvenile habitat, and recruitment variability. The BRT acknowledged that significant levels of uncertainty are present for all aspects of bumphead parrotfish biology, e.g., reproductive biology, abundance, trends in abundance, and threats. The Team decided to explicitly treat variation in team member opinions by using a plausibility …