Catch rates, composition and fish size from reefs managed with periodically-harvested closures
Cohen, Philippa Jane, and Alexander, Timothy J. (2013) Catch rates, composition and fish size from reefs managed with periodically-harvested closures. PLoS ONE, 8 (9). e73383. pp. 1-12.
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Abstract
Periodically-harvested closures are commonly employed within co-management frameworks to help manage small-scale, multi-species fisheries in the Indo-Pacific. Despite their widespread use, the benefits of periodic harvesting strategies for multi-species fisheries have, to date, been largely untested. We examine catch and effort data from four periodically-harvested reef areas and 55 continuously-fished reefs in Solomon Islands. We test the hypothesis that fishing in periodically-harvested closures would yield: (a) higher catch rates, (b) proportionally more short lived, fast growing, sedentary taxa, and (c) larger finfish and invertebrates, compared to catches from reefs continuously open to fishing. Our study showed that catch rates were significantly higher from periodically-harvested closures for gleaning of invertebrates, but not for line and spear fishing. The family level composition of catches did not vary significantly between open reefs and periodically-harvested closures. Fish captured from periodically-harvested closures were slightly larger, but Trochus niloticus were significantly smaller than those from continuously open reefs. In one case of intense and prolonged harvesting, gleaning catch rates significantly declined, suggesting invertebrate stocks were substantially depleted in the early stages of the open period. Our study suggests periodically-harvested closures can have some short term benefits via increasing harvesting efficiency. However, we did not find evidence that the strategy had substantially benefited multi-species fin-fisheries.
Item ID: | 29997 |
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Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
Additional Information: | © 2013 Cohen and Alexander. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems |
Projects and Grants: | ARC Discovery Project grant DP0987537, ACIAR grant FIS/2012/056 |
Date Deposited: | 30 Oct 2013 09:47 |
FoR Codes: | 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050209 Natural Resource Management @ 70% 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050210 Pacific Peoples Environmental Knowledge @ 30% |
SEO Codes: | 83 ANIMAL PRODUCTION AND ANIMAL PRIMARY PRODUCTS > 8302 Fisheries - Wild Caught > 830299 Fisheries- Wild Caught not elsewhere classified @ 60% 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9606 Environmental and Natural Resource Evaluation > 960604 Environmental Management Systems @ 40% 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9606 Environmental and Natural Resource Evaluation > 960609 Sustainability Indicators @ 0% |
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