[Coral-List] Centuries of reef protection

[Alan E. Davis]

Chuck:

 I fished for Opelu (Decapterus sp.) in Kona, Hawaii,  in the 1970s.  I
heard anecdotally that  the Opelu fishery at Oahu were over-exploited. If I
recall correctly, the price of Opelu may have been higher there.  There are
two fisheries for Opelu in Kona: a daytime net fishery, with conical nets
fished vertically, pulled up around a baited school; and a second
nightlighting fishery, where fishes were attracted to lamps, and jigged
with feather lures.  The fishes of the daytime fishery at the time were
quite a bit smaller than the fish caught at night.  I never thought about
it, and I don't know whether there are two species, or (as seems probable
to me) a different cohort of larger, perhaps reproductive adults are
attracted at night.

A fear existed at that time, on Hawaii Island that the population(s) there
might be subject to being overfished as well.

In his Ichthylogy class, Steve Amesbury communicated that Decapterus
sp(p).  are rare or absent on Guam, although reports exist of a traditional
fishery on Guam, where fish are conditioned to come to sounds at a spot
outside the reef on Tumon side, and are at some point captured.
Considerable effort was required.    He wondered (hoped?) whether they
might return, whether there might be a long term cycle involved.

I recognize that commercial reef-fisheries are unsustainable; even
primitive fisheries shortly after colonization showed signs (reduction in
size or changes in community structure).  That said, the sustainability of
small pelagics may not stand up---indeed may not have stood up at this
point---especially those favored by consumers.

Smaller fishes like anchovies,herrings, or sardines may be more
sustainable.   Or maybe not.

Thank you for the letter.  I enjoyed reading it.

Alan Davis

On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 7:58 AM Charles Birkeland via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> I feel compelled to call attention to a paper that just came out with a
> historical perspective of how the tradition of offshore fishing for tuna
> rather than nearshore reef fishes may have enhanced the resilience of the
> coral reefs in the Maldives (Yadav et al. 2019. King tuna: Indian Ocean
> trade, offshore fishing, and coral reef resilience in the Maldives
> archipelago. ICES Journal of Marine Science doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsz170).
> Archaeological collections from the first to ninth centuries CE showed that
> scombrids were a major food in the Maldives and historical records
> indicated that tuna was a major component of international trade around the
> Indian Ocean from the Maldives for perhaps a thousand years. It was
> fortunate for the resilience of Maldive coral reefs and for the food
> security and stable economy of a robust fishery for the people of the
> Maldives over many centuries that their culture valued offshore fisheries
> rather than reef fishes.
>
> Unfortunately, the globalization of tourism has recently brought a large
> influx of several times more people than the native population to the
> Maldives and tourists often want to be served exotic reef fishes in
> resorts. In contrast to pelagic fishes, reef fishes are a diverse array of
> mostly small fishes that have relatively slow population turnover and are
> vulnerable to overharvest. The authors of this article recommend that
> resorts encourage the consumption of skipjack tuna rather than reef fishes,
> building the attractiveness of pelagic fishes from the story of their
> strong role in the tradition and culture of the people of Maldives.
> Although the tuna have sustained fisheries in the Maldives for perhaps a
> couple thousand years, the human population has grown and pollutants that
> can accumulate in higher predators have increased to the point that Martin
> Hall and Daniel Pauly have recommended focusing more on the smaller
> pelagics for usual consumption, considering the larger pelagics as “luxury”
> fishes for consumption on special occasions. Yadav et al. (2019) smartly
> recommend skipjack, one of the smaller and probably the most sustainable of
> the scombrids.
>
> Restaurants in Hawaii switched from reef fishes to pelagic fishes on their
> menus when tourism grew after WW II (Van Houton et al. 2013. Front Ecol
> Environ 11: 289-290). The small bigeye scad is called “the most popular
> fish in Hawaii” (Pacific) and I have been told the Kenchi Bigeye Scad
> Seafood Restaurant is one of the most popular tourist restaurants in
> Curaçao (Atlantic). I visited Hawaiian fish markets and talked to local
> people. Although reef fishes are still in fish markets, the culture favors
> pelagic fishes for poke, especially the small nearshore scads. As
> recommended by Yadav et al. (2019), the use of tradition and culture in
> marketing might be effective in diverting focus from reef fishes to
> pelagics.
>
> I worry when those that are trying to extol the value of coral reefs
> emphasize that coral reef ecosystems are especially productive, and
> therefore are important for fisheries production for the world. It is
> certainly true that the gross primary productivity of coral reefs is among
> the highest. Scott Nixon’s (1982. Oceanologica Acta SP: 357-371), based on
> 49 studies at 25 sites, found that the gross primary production of coral
> reefs is about 10 times that of other marine systems. But he also found
> that the potential surplus net production (fisheries yield) of coral reefs
> was only about a tenth of that of pelagic fisheries. This is because of at
> least two disparate factors.
>
> First, the diverse, small, and long-lived coral-reef fishes are somewhat
> like song birds in the very productive tropical rainforests. Reef fishes
> can sustain protein for subsistence of small populations of local native
> humans, but like song birds, their life-history traits are not appropriate
> for feeding the world by commercial exploitation. It seems to me that the
> great productivity of rainforests is celebrated for the biodiversity it
> maintains rather than for producing songbirds for world consumption.
>
> Second, although gross primary productivity is great on coral reefs, the
> net productivity supporting the diverse biomass of consumers on undisturbed
> coral reefs is also so great that nearly all is used, leaving very little
> surplus net production. Hatcher (1997 in Life and Death of Coral Reefs)
> documents < 1% of gross productivity is surplus; Kinsey (1983 in Barnes
> [ed.] Perspectives on Coral Reefs) found that respiration of coral
> communities approximately equals gross production; and Polovina’s data
> (1984. Coral Reefs 3:1 – 11) indicate reefs may sometimes need some
> external input when required net production is greater than gross
> production. Of course, there has been a great biomass of coral-reef fishes
> taken over the past decades to feed the world’s human population. I suspect
> this has substantially reduced upper trophic levels on many reefs which
> releases much of the net primary productivity as surplus, but do we really
> want to advocate this?
>
> I believe Yadav et al. (2019) is an important documentation of the food
> security and stable economy of a robust pelagic fishery for the people of
> the Maldives over many centuries and how this culture enhances the
> resilience of coral reefs.
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outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
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