Frequent culling of the invasive Indo-Pacific Lionfish throughout the Caribbean has been shown to cause a shift towards more wary and reclusive behaviour by lionfish, which has prompted calls for halting culls. This paper, co-authored by REEF Lionfish Program researchers, addresses those concerns and reviews research conducted by REEF and other research efforts. Culling successfully lowers lionfish numbers and has been shown to stabilise or even reverse declines in native prey fish.
This study, co-authored by scientists from REEF's Grouper Moon Project, evaluated genetic connectedness between Nassau Grouper populations throughout the Caribbean. The authors obtained genetic tissue samples from 620 Nassau Grouper from 19 sites across 9 countries, including the Cayman Islands. They found evidence for strong genetic differentiation among Nassau Grouper subpopulations throughout the Caribbean. These results suggest that, despite a lack of physical barriers, Nassau grouper form multiple distinct subpopulations in the Caribbean Sea.
In response to conservation concerns for inshore rockfish, Fisheries and Oceans Canada implemented a system of 164 rockfish conservation areas (RCAs) in British Columbia as part of the Rockfish Conservation Strategy. RCAs were established between 2004 and 2007. RCAs are not marine protected areas (MPAs) because they were not designated though any MPA legislative tool such as Canada’s Ocean Act, but rather through a fishery closure using the Fisheries Act. They can, however, be considered harvest refugia.
REEF data were used to validate population estimates of Black Rockfish throughout western Canada, Washington State, and Oregon. These results were then used to evaluate the efficacy of marine reserve networks in these areas. The authors of the study estimated the scale of dispersal from genetic data in the black rockfish, and compared this estimate with the distance between Rockfish Conservation Areas that aim to protect this species (essentially evaluating whether the reserves are "connected" enough).
The study, conducted by Dr. Stephanie Green (OSU/REEF), Lad Akins (REEF), and others, confirms for the first time that controlling lionfish populations in the western Atlantic Ocean can pave the way for a recovery of native fish. Even if it's one speared fish at a time, data are showing that removals can be effective. And not every lionfish need be removed…the research findings document that reducing lionfish numbers by specified amounts will allow a rapid recovery of native fish biomass.
There is an increasing need to examine regional patterns of diversity in coral-reef systems because their biodiversity is declining globally. The authors used REEF data from 80 sites from 6 eco-regions throughout the Caribbean to evaluate patterns of biodiversity. Specifically, they used "additive partitioning", which quantifies the contribution of different types of diversity (alpha and beta; comparing diversity between sites within a region and between regions) to total diversity across different spatial scales.
The authors describe the behavioral interactions of piscivorous mid-water and demersal fishes at subtropical live-bottom reefs off the coast of Georgia and off the west coast of Florida in the northeast Gulf of Mexico. The observations are used to construct a topological behavior web of the interactions of mid-water and demersal piscivores, their prey, and those associated species that modify predator-prey interactions. Results show that inter-specific behavioral interactions are common attributes of piscivores in these reef fish communities.
Despite being the world’s largest rays and providing significant revenue through dive tourism, little is known about the population status, exploitation, and trade volume of the Mobulidae (mobulids; Manta and Mobula spp.). There is anecdotal evidence, however, that mobulid populations are declining, largely due to the recent emergence of a widespread trade for their gill rakers.
A database of fish surveys conducted by volunteer recreational divers trained by REEF was used to examine fish populations in Monterey Peninsula, California, between 1997 and 2011. Over 3,000 surveys were conducted as part of this ongoing citizen science effort. The analysis was conducted using a numerical conversion method to calculate population estimates from REEF log-scale data (this method was described in a companion paper published in the same CalCOFI Reports issue).
This paper describes several models to convert order-of-magnitude count data that are collected during REEF Roving Diver Technique (RDT) surveys to a numeric mean, and demonstrate that with a sufficient number of surveys, estimates of the mean with a reasonably small confidence interval can be attained. For each model, parameter estimates and associated confidence intervals were derived from 292 RDT surveys where precise counts were also made. Models were compared using the small sample Akaike Information Criteria (AICc).