Protection efforts have resulted in ~10% of existing fish biomass on coral reefs

Caldwell, Iain ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8148-8762 , McClanahan, Tim, Oddenyo, Remy, Graham, Nicholas, Beger, Maria, Vigliola, Laurent, Sandin, Stuart, Friedlander, Alan, Randriamanantsoa, Bemahafaly, Wantiez, Laurent, Green, Alison, Humphries, Austin, Hardt, Marah, Caselle, Jennifer, Feary, David, Karkarey, Rucha, Jadot, Catherine, Hoey, Andrew, Eurich, Jacob, Wilson, Shaun, Crane, Nicole, Tupper, Mark ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6157-7714 , Ferse, Sebastian, Maire, Eva, Mouillot, David and Cinner, Joshua (2024) Protection efforts have resulted in ~10% of existing fish biomass on coral reefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (42). e2308605121.

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Abstract

The amount of ocean protected from fishing and other human impacts has often been used as a metric of conservation progress. However, protection efforts have highly variable outcomes that depend on local conditions, which makes it difficult to quantify what coral reef protection efforts to date have actually achieved at a global scale. Here, we develop a predictive model of how local conditions influence conservation outcomes on ~2,600 coral reef sites across 44 ecoregions, which we used to quantify how much more fish biomass there is on coral reefs compared to a modeled scenario with no protection. Under the assumptions of our model, our study reveals that without existing protection efforts there would be ~10% less fish biomass on coral reefs. Thus, we estimate that coral reef protection efforts have led to approximately 1 in every 10 kg of existing fish biomass.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher:	National Academy of Sciences
ISSN:	1091-6490
Departments:	Institute of Science and Environment > Forestry and Conservation Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA)
Additional Information:	Mark Tupper, Associate Professor, Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas, Institute of Science and the Environment, University of Cumbria, UK. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	11 Oct 2024 08:43
Last Modified:	16 Oct 2024 08:45
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8443

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