[Coral-List] Help finding heavily overfished reefs in the Caribbean

[Adam Priest]

Hi Joe,

I took a coral reef assessment course through the Florida Keys Community College in May of this year (I am a coastal engineer and wanted to learn more about coral reefs) and part of the course was to perform underwater surveys using two assessment protocols (Reef Check & RECON) in the field.  The class traveled to Bonaire to conduct a week's worth of surveys and what I was most struck by wasn't the coral reef, which was amazing, but the lack of any fish other than reef fish. We made between 3 and 4 dives a day for the week we were there and stayed only on the leeward side of the island but during that time very few larger food fish were seen by our group. I do not know what fishing practices they use there but just thought I would pass on my observation.  


Thanks,

Adam Priest

Maxwell Marine Consulting Engineers, Inc.
Key Largo, FL
adam at maxwellmarineconsult.com


-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of coral-list-request at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 12:00 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Coral-List Digest, Vol 38, Issue 14

Today's Topics:

   1. Help finding heavily overfished reefs in the Caribbean
      (Pawlik, Joseph)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:20:56 -0400
From: "Pawlik, Joseph" <pawlikj at uncw.edu>
Subject: [Coral-List] Help finding heavily overfished reefs in the
	Caribbean
To: "coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov" <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Message-ID:
	<E30E1E2D99AF8045ABC01A57EB60749F907EC992F8 at uncwexmb2.dcs.uncw.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hello, Coral-list members,

We're doing a study of the effects of fishing on sponge and coral communities on reefs in the Caribbean.
We would like to survey continuous fringing, spur-and-grove coral reefs, ~15 m (50 ft) depth, that are intensively fished using fish traps  or seines so that there are virtually no fish on the reef (except damsels, chromis, bait-fish etc).

Have you seen Caribbean reefs specifically like this?  If so, please let me know the locations.

Thanks very much for your help,

Joe

**************************************************************
Joseph R. Pawlik, Professor
Department of Biology and Marine Biology
UNCW Center for Marine Science
5600 Marvin K Moss Lane
Wilmington, NC  28409   USA
pawlikj at uncw.edu<mailto:pawlikj at uncw.edu>; Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579
Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html
PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html
**************************************************************



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