Corals were bleached throughout Kenya and most of the western Indian Ocean in the warm season of 1998 and coral mortality occurred over an extended period from March to July 1998 (1–3). Nearly all studied Kenyan coral reefs had coral cover of around 10% after the coral bleaching (1, 3). The greatest levels of mortality were experienced in marine protected areas that originally had high coral co...

Marine reserves, areas closed to all forms of fishing, continue to be advocated and implemented to supplement fisheries and conserve populations. However, although the reproductive potential of important fishery species can dramatically increase inside reserves, the extent to which larval offspring are exported and the relative contribution of reserves to recruitment in fished and protected pop...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been recommended as an essential conservation tool for ecosystems and fisheries, with MPA coverage increasing four-fold globally since 2000. Despite the increased usage of MPAs, empirical results scientists are divided on effectiveness MPAs to reach their management goals. In 2009, South Atlantic Fishery Management Council established eight deep-water partiall...

Ecosystem modelling is increasingly used to explore ecosystem-level effects of changing environmental conditions and management actions. For coral reefs there has been increasing interest in recent decades in the use of ecosystem models for evaluating the effects of fishing and the efficacy of marine protected areas. However, ecosystem models that integrate physical forcings, biogeochemical and...

According to three precautionary estimations, the reef-degrading capacity of the cyanide fishery for food fish on Indonesia’s coral reefs amounts to a loss of live coral cover of 0.047, 0.052 and 0.060 m2 per 100 m2 of reef per year. These estimates for the rate of coral cover loss are low compared to published rates of natural coral recovery. Differences in growth rate between species of hard ...

Recent episodes of coral bleaching have led to wide-scale loss of reef corals and raised concerns over the effectiveness of existing conservation and management efforts. The 1998 bleaching event was most severe in the western Indian Ocean, where coral declined by up to 90% in some locations. Using fisheries-independent data, we assessed the long-term impacts of this event on fishery target spec...

Mislabelling and species substitution are major concerns for fishery products marketed in the EU. The present survey aimed to investigate the correct enforcement of the Community and National rules on the labelling and marketing of fishery products retailed in Sardinia (Italy) between 2009 and 2014. A total of 3000 labels for fresh unpacked fishery products have been considered. A total of 900 ...

Live coral is harvested throughout the Indo-West Pacific to make lime, used in the consumption of the world's fourth-most consumed drug, betel nut. Coral harvesting is an environmental concern; however, because lime-making is one of the few sources of income in some areas of Papua New Guinea (PNG), the practice is unlikely to stop. To better manage coral harvest, we used standard fishery-yield ...