The spatial, multi-species nature of coral reef fisheries makes them notoriously difficult to manage. We have developed a simulation modeling approach to examine the effect of management options on the recreationally important tourist destination of Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia where a recreational fishery targets Spangled Emperor (Lethrinus nebulosus). The approach brings a broad range o...

The degradation of the world’s coral reefs has aroused growing interest in ecological restoration as a countermeasure, which is widely criticized, mainly due to cost-effectiveness concerns. Here, we propose the restocking of herbivorous fish as a restoration tool, based on supply of young fish to degraded reefs, with the aims of: (1) Buildup of a critical fish biomass for basic ecosystem functi...

Marine no-take reserves, where fishing and other extractive activities are prohibited, have well-established conservation benefits [1], yet their impacts on fisheries remains contentious [2-4]. For fishery species, reserves are often implemented alongside more conventional harvest strategies, including catch and size limits [2, 5]. However, catch and fish abundances observed post-intervention a...

The Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and the amended Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act elevated habitat and conservation as priorities in federal fisheries management. In particular, the Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) amendment to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act establishes guidelines to assist fishery managers in the description and identifica...

A recent shift in the pattern of commercial harvest in the Keppel Island region of the southern inshore Great Barrier Reef raises concern about the depletion of a number of relatively rare restricted range taxa. The shift appears to be driven by demand from the United States (US) for corals for domestic aquaria. Data from the annual status reports from the Queensland Coral Fishery were compared...

We model the effect of a no-take reserve in a marine fishery management area, such as on a coral reef. Implicitly, eggs and larvae are mobile but adults are not; and there is open access fishing outside the reserve. A reserve is found to increase equilibrium catch if the prior ratio of stock to carrying capacity is less than a half, and the catch-maximising reserve proportion rises towards a ha...

Non-fishery use of artificial reefs has been given attention in recent years. The primary concern associated with non-fishery artificial reefs is their effects to the surrounding ecosystems. This study examined the infaunal communities around two non-fishery artificial reefs (the sunken vessels YO257 and Sea Tiger) in Mamala Bay, Hawaii. Infaunal community structures at these artificial reefs w...

The ecosystem goods and services provided by coral reefs are critical to the social and economic welfare of hundreds of millions of people, overwhelmingly in developing countries [1]. Widespread reef degradation is severely eroding these goods and services, but the socioeconomic factors shaping the ways that societies use coral reefs are poorly understood [2]. We examine relationships between h...

IN THEIR REPORT “EFFECTS OF MARINE reserves on adjacent fisheries” (30 Nov., p. 1920), C. M. Roberts and co-authors present data indicating that fishery yields have increased in waters adjacent to marine reserves in St. Lucia and east Florida. In many developing island nations like St. Lucia in the Caribbean, fisheries are seriously overexploited, and little or no fisheries management exists. I...

No-take marine fishery reserves sustain commercial stocks by acting as buffers against overexploitation and enhancing fishery catches in adjacent areas through spillover. Likewise, nursery habitats such as mangroves enhance populations of some species in adjacent habitats. However, there is lack of understanding of the magnitude of stock enhancement and the effects on community structure when b...