Overfishing is arguably the greatest ecological threat facing the oceans, yet catches of many highly migratory fishes including oceanic sharks remain largely unregulated with poor monitoring and data reporting. Oceanic shark conservation is hampered by basic knowledge gaps about where sharks aggregate across population ranges and precisely where they overlap with fishers. Using satellite tracki...

Elasmobranchs are among the most threatened long-lived marine species worldwide, and incidental capture is a major source of mortality. The northern central Adriatic Sea, though one of the most overfished basins of the Mediterranean Sea, supports a very valuable marine biodiversity, including elasmobranchs. This study assesses the impact of the northern central Adriatic pelagic trawl fishery on...

Concentrations of biodiversity, or hotspots, represent conservation priorities in terrestrial ecosystems but remain largely unexplored in marine habitats. In the open ocean, many large predators such as tunas, sharks, billfishes, and sea turtles are of current conservation concern because of their vulnerability to overfishing and ecosystem role. Here we use scientific-observer records from pela...

The pelagic ocean harbors one of the largest ecosystems on Earth. It is responsible for approximately half of global primary production, sustains worldwide fisheries, and plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. Ocean warming caused by anthropogenic climate change is already starting to impact the marine biota, with possible consequences for ocean productivity and ecosystem services....

A large fraction of primary production is recycled through a marine protozoa–bacterioplankton predator– prey chain in most aquatic ecosystems. The size of food resources and the ratio between predators and prey determine the organic matter transfer through the ‘classical’ or the ‘microbial’ pathway (Azam et al. 1983). The effect of grazers on the prey can play an important role in selectivity a...

Climate-related effects occur across all regions in Tanzania, affecting primary sectors such as agriculture and fishing. This study investigated the impacts of climatic change on small pelagic catches fishers Kilindoni, Kipumbwi Kilwa Kivinje villages along Tanzanian coast. We studied how changes rainfall, sea surface temperature, wind speed chlorophyll a affect fisheries using secondary data. ...

Shark depredation, the full or partial removal of a hooked fish by shark before it is landed, anecdotally increasing in United States. Perceptions depredation anglers and fishing guides may influence their behavior have cascading effects on sharks recreational fisheries. However, to date, these perceptions not been broadly quantified. To better understand how respond fisheries, we used an onlin...

This paper presents a progress report on the application of a length-based age-structured model (Fournier et al. in press) to the integrated analysis of western and central Pacific yellowfin tuna catch, effort, size and tagging data. This project was developed by a small working group of the Western Pacific Yellowfin Research Group (WPYRG), and has been funded by the University of Hawaii Pelagi...

Following a brief presentation of marine catch trends in Southeast Asia, some biological peculiarities of the stocks upon which these fisheries rely are discussed. Two empirical loglinear models are presented allowing rough estimation of potential yield of small pelagic fishes fish from primary production, and of demersal fish from mean water depth and primary production. These models are appli...