Increasing fishing too quickly can cause coral reef ecosystems to collapse, new CU Boulder-led research finds.
Increasing fishing too quickly can cause coral reef ecosystems to collapse, new CU Boulder-led research finds.
The new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, provides the first evidence that these marine ecosystems are highly sensitive to how quickly a target fishing level is reached. Surprisingly, this pattern in the ecosystem is driven by the social behaviors of individual coral reef fish.
In many fisheries, target fishing levels are set with hopes to maximize harvest while keeping the fishery sustainable, year after year. Conventional wisdom suggests that target fishing levels should be approached as quickly as possible to reap benefits immediately. However, researchers say that raising fishing to the same target level a bit more slowly could sustain both a fishery and an ecosystem that would otherwise collapse.
“The ecosystem depends on the pace at which the environment is changing, not just the magnitude,” said Mike Gil, lead author and a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
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Image via Mike Gil.
