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Along with the development of the tropical tuna purse-seine fishery from the 1960s in the Atlantic Ocean and from the 1980s in the Indian Ocean, many projects and studies have been conducted to improve knowledge about the biology, migrations and dynamics of the stocks of target and non-target (i.e. bycatch) species taken in these fisheries. Since the 2000s, the European Union (EU) has been supporting Member States in the collection of biological data on species caught by their purse seine and pole and line fisheries, thus making it possible to have a long-term series of data. Biological data have never been saved by the different tuna commissions, unlike the catches by species and sizes by areas and periods. However, these data are essential to monitor the status of the fisheries and fuel the assessment models used by the tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (tRFMOs) for the sustainable management and conservation of the fish stocks under their mandate. We combined historical (1974-1999) and current (2003-2020) datasets on the biology of tropical tunas and bycatch fish caught by large-scale purse seiners in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean (EAO) and Western Indian Ocean (WIO). The resulting Tunabio database is presented in the present data paper and contains all available morphometric and biological data collected on more than 80,000 fish individuals.

The study was undertaken in the intertidal zone on the lee side of Heron Island cay (southern Great Barrier Reef) where there is a high density of branching corals. We investigated the infl uence of coral colony size on the diversity of damselfi sh species (Pomacentridae) associated with the branching corals. Forty coral colonies were marked and the associated pomacentrids photographed and identifi ed. Eleven or twelve species were identifi ed and there were up to eight species associated with a coral colony. The relationships between diversity of fi sh species and coral colony area, and coral colony perimeter were very signifi cant. Plankton samples in the vicinity of the fringing reef are sparse during the day when the fi sh are feeding compared to the rich samples at night when they aren't feeding, suggesting a substantial impact on the zooplankton content of the water fl owing over the fi shes' habitats. In contrast to the 'wall of mouths' on the windward crest of a patch reef, it is suggested that these pomacentrid inhabitants of the shallow waters fringing Heron Island cay constitute a 'fi eld of mouths'. During the day, they trap and retain the allochthinous organic material that fl ows across the shallow coral reef and act as a source of nutrients for this coral reef ecosystem.

In the version of this Article originally published, a technical error meant two proof corrections were not actioned. In the sentence that started "Fishery changes were underpinned… ", a citation to ref. 9 was missing, and that to ref. 22 was misplaced. The sentence should have read: "Fishery changes were underpinned by species' differential responses to the post-bleaching benthic trajectories, suggesting that projections for reef fisheries that are based on habitat-driven loss of fish biomass (for example ref. 9) have overlooked the potential for increased productivity of low trophic levels 22 , particularly browsing herbivores on regime-shifted reefs. " These errors have now been corrected in the Article.