Caldwell, Iain R., McClanahan, Tim R., Oddenyo, Remy M., Graham, Nicholas A.J., Beger, Maria, Vigliola, Laurent, Sandin, Stuart A., Friedlander, Alan M., Randriamanantsoa, Bemahafaly, Wantiez, Laurent, Green, Alison L., Humphries, Austin T., Hardt, Marah J., Caselle, Jennifer E., Feary, David A., Karkarey, Rucha, Jadot, Catherine, Hoey, Andrew S., Eurich, Jacob G., Wilson, Shaun K., Crane, Nicole L., Tupper, Mark, Ferse, Sebastian C.A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0930-5356, Maire, Eva, Mouillot, Davi and Cinner, Joshua E. (2024) Protection efforts have resulted in ~10% of existing fish biomass on coral reefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (42). e2308605121. DOI https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308605121.

Text (published main manuscript) Caldwell et al. PNAS 2024.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only until 6 April 2025. Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0. Download (2MB)

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 (including both fishing restrictions and fully protected marine protected areas) 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 among surveyed coral reefs. Thus, we estimate that coral reef protection efforts have led approximately 1 in every 10 kg of existing fish biomass.

Document Type:	Article
Programme Area:	PA1
Research affiliation:	Science Management > Office for Knowledge Exchange
Refereed:	Yes
Open Access Journal?:	No
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308605121
ISSN:	0027-8424
Date Deposited:	09 Oct 2024 11:48
Last Modified:	09 Oct 2024 11:50
URI:	http://cris.leibniz-zmt.de/id/eprint/5471

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