Contrasting tropical marine herbivorous fish catches between the Indo-Pacific and Western Atlantic
Lutzenkirchen, Lucas L., Tebbett, Sterling B., Yan, Helen F., and Bellwood, David R. (2025) Contrasting tropical marine herbivorous fish catches between the Indo-Pacific and Western Atlantic. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 35 (2). e81847. pp. 1011-1029.
|
PDF (Published Version)
- Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Ensuring food security in the Anthropocene presents a significant socio-ecological challenge, especially in rapidly changing coastal seascapes that sustain critical fisheries. Herbivorous fishes are essential for food and financial security through fisheries, however, their contributions to regional catches, and the factors influencing them, are not well understood. Analysing reported and reconstructed catch data across 69 Exclusive Economic Zones, we identify shallow-reef area and coastal population density as significant predictors of herbivorous fish catches. However, between-realm (i.e. Indo-Pacific vs. Western Atlantic) differences are marked, with rabbitfishes contributing disproportionately to herbivorous fishery catches. While rabbitfishes have the potential to support productive fisheries due to their relatively faster life-history traits, a 60% decline in catch-per-unit-effort suggests that their production potential, along with parrotfishes and surgeonfishes, may be decreasing globally. Our study highlights contrasting social-ecological outcomes for human populations in the Western Atlantic vs. Indo-Pacific; a difference primarily driven by rabbitfish catches.
| Item ID: | 87564 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1573-5184 |
| Keywords: | Coral reefs, Fisheries, Parrotfishes, Rabbitfishes, Surgeonfishes |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Jan 2026 04:26 |
| FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180504 Marine biodiversity @ 100% |
| More Statistics |
Actions (Repository Staff Only)
 |
Item Control Page |