Advancing marine conservation
Background: Marine populations have been declining at a worrying rate, due in large part to fishing pressures. The challenge is to secure a future for marine life while minimizing impacts on fishers and fishing communities. Methods and Principal Findings: Rather than selecting areas where fishing is banned – as is usually the case with spatial …
Marine protected areas (MPAs) can be an effective tool for marine biodiversity conservation, yet decision-makers usually have limited and biased datasets with which to make decisions about where to locate MPAs. Using commonly available abiotic and biotic datasets, I asked how many datasets are necessary to achieve robust patterns of conservation importance. I applied a …
Ban, N. C., Caldwell, I.R., Green, T.L., Morgan, S.K., O’Donnell K. & J.C. Selgrath (2009). Diverse fisheries require diverse solutions. Science 323(5912):338-339. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.323.5912.338
The implications of shrinkage associated with desiccation and ethanol preservation for seahorses (genus Hippocampus) were investigated using Hippocampus guttulatus (European long-snouted seahorse) as a model. Specifically, this research addressed the implications of preservation for taxonomy and life history studies and the application of minimum size limits (MSL) for managing seahorse trade. In 2004, the Convention …
Hippocampus tyro is described as a new species of seahorse from one specimen, 34 mm high and 61 mm in total length, dredged from 43–48 m off Poivre Atoll, Seychelles in 1992. It is unique for the genus in having 14 trunk rings and a single middorsal gill opening. It is compared with two other …
A major mid-1980s shift in ecological structure of significant portions of the Southern Ocean was partially due to the serial depletion of fish by intensive industrial fishing, rather than solely to climate factors as previously hypothesized. Over a brief period (1969–1973), several finfish stocks were on average reduced to <50%, and finally (mid-1980s) to <20%, …
Achieving multiple conservation objectives can be challenging, particularly under high uncertainty. Having agreed to limit seahorse (Hippocampus) exports to sustainable levels, signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) were offered the option of a single 10-cm minimum size limit (MSL) as an interim management measure for …
Mate competition and mate choice are not mutually exclusive behaviors. Both behaviors may drive sexual selection in one or both sexes of a population. One of several factors affecting which behavior is exhibited by which sex is the operational sex ratio (OSR) in the study population. The present study combines behavioral observations in the field …
We applaud DR Griffith (Front Ecol Environ 2008; 6[4]: 191–98) for addressing important fisheries management issues, but question the applicability of his solution (individual fishing quotas, IFQs) to the majority of the world’s fishing effort. Griffith’s IFQ success stories poorly represent the artisanal (small-scale) fleets that take 28–58% of global catch and employ 99% of …
Three new species of pygmy seahorse are described from Indonesia: Hippocampus pontohi and H. severnsi from Bunaken Island, off Sulawesi, and H. satomiae from Derawan Island, off Kalimantan. They are considered to be closely related to each other and to Hippocampus colemani. All three species are morphologically distinguished from the larger species of seahorses by …