Reef fishes exhibit a bipartite life cycle where a benthic adult stage is preceded by a pelagic dispersal phase during which larvae are presumed to be mixed and transported by oceanic currents. Genetic analyses based on twelve microsatellite loci of 181 three-spot dascyllus (Dascyllus trimaculatus) that settled concurrently on a small reef in French Polynesia revealed 11 groups of siblings (1 f...

Myers and Worm’s recent letter to the editor raise serious concerns about the impacts of the industrial fishing on large predatory fish and the associated biological community in four continental shelf and nine pelagic oceanic systems. They suggest that in these systems industrial fisheries have removed 90% of the large predators and that these removals may compromise the sustainability of fish...

Nineteen species of cetaceans (families Balaenopteridae, Kogiidae, Physeteridae, Ziphiidae and Delphinidae) occur in the Costa Rican Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Based on data recorded from the EEZ by the Southwest Fisheries Service Center, Cascadia Research Collective, and CIMAR between 1979-2001, we mapped the distribution of 18 cetacean species. Our results suggest that the majorit...

The stock of the Senegalese flat sardinella, Sardinella maderensis, is highly exploited in Senegal, West Africa. Its growth and reproduction parameters are key biological indicators for improving fisheries management. This study reviewed these parameters using landing data from small-scale fisheries in Senegal and literature information dated back more than 25 years. Age was estimated using len...

The devil-ray family Mobulidae (order Myliobatiformes) comprises wide-ranging, pelagic batoids, but little is known about their basic ecology. We present the first data on the longdistance movement of mobulid devil rays. We attached pop-up archival satellite tags to 13 individuals of the spine-tail devil ray Mobula japanica (disk width 199.5 ± 30.0 cm; mean ± SD) off Baja California Sur to exam...

Fisheries bycatch is a critical source of mortality for rapidly declining populations of leatherback turtles, Dermochelys coriacea. We integrated use-intensity distributions for 135 satellite-tracked adult turtles with longline fishing effort to estimate predicted bycatch risk over space and time in the Pacific Ocean. Areas of predicted bycatch risk did not overlap for eastern and western Pacif...

Improving knowledge of the population sizes of all the world's seabirds allows this provisional estimate of their annual food consumption. Knowing the body mass and energy density of prey it is possible to employ standard metabolic equations to estimate daily and hence annual consumption of a seabird. Using this approach, and assuming that, at the least, there are three individuals alive for ev...

There has been increasing recognition of the need to address adverse ecological and socioeconomic effects abandoned, lost discarded fishing gear (ALDFG). This component marine debris progressively problematic over recent decades with rapid expansion global fisheries’ footprint effort, transition synthetic more durable materials for components. ALDFG drivers consequences vary substantially by ty...