Global decline in capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services Highlights d Coral reef habitat, biodiversity, fisheries, effort, and food-web impacts are evaluated d Global coverage of living coral has declined by half since the 1950s d Catch of coral reef associate fishes per unit effort has decreased by 60% since 1950 d Coral reefs' capacity to provide ecosystem services has declined by half since the 1950s

No abstract

Catch-only models (COMs) have been the focus of ongoing research into data-poor stock assessment methods. Two of the most recent models that are especially promising are (i) CMSY+, the latest refined version of CMSY that has progressed from Catch-MSY, and (ii) SRA+ (Stock Reduction Analysis Plus) a recent developments in field. Comparing COMs and evaluating their relative performance is essential for determining the state of regional and global fisheries that may be lacking necessary data that would be required to run traditional assessment models. In this paper we interrogate how performance of COMs can be improved by incorporating additional sources of information. We evaluate the performance of COMs on a dataset of 48 data-rich ICES (International Council for the Exploration of Seas) stock assessments. As one measure of performance, we consider the ability of the model to correctly classify stock status using FAO’s 3-tier classification that is also used for reporting on sustainable development goals to the UN. Both COMs showed notable bias when run with their inbuilt default heuristics, but as the quality of prior information increased, classification rates for the terminal year improved substantially. We conclude that although further COM refinements show some potential, most promising is the ongoing research into developing biomass or fishing effort priors for COMs in order to be able to reliably track stock status for the majority of the world’s fisheries currently lacking stock assessments.

Following a brief review of their biology, this contribution is an attempt to provide a global overview of the catches of mesopelagic fishes (of which 2.68 million tonnes were officially reported to the FAO) throughout the world ocean from 1950 to 2018, to serve as a baseline to a future development of these fisheries. The overview is based on a thorough scanning of the literature dealing with commercial or experimental fisheries for mesopelagics and their catches, and/or the mesopelagic bycatch of other fisheries. All commercial (industrial and artisanal) fisheries for mesopelagic fishes were included, as well as experimental fisheries of which we were aware, while catches performed only to obtain scientific samples were omitted. The processes of generating bycatch and causing discards are discussed, with emphasis on Russian fisheries. From peer-reviewed and gray literature, we lifted information on mesopelagic fisheries and assembled it into one document, which we then summarized into two text tables with catch data, one by country/region, the other by species or species groups.

No abstract

Rebuilding overexploited marine populations is an important step to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 14-Life Below Water. Mitigating major human pressures is required to achieve rebuilding goals. Climate change is one such key pressure, impacting fish and invertebrate populations by changing their biomass and biogeography. Here, combining projection from a dynamic bioclimate envelope model with published estimates of status of exploited populations from a catch-based analysis, we analyze the effects of different global warming and fishing levels on biomass rebuilding for the exploited species in 226 marine ecoregions of the world. Fifty three percent (121) of the marine ecoregions have significant (at 5% level) relationship between biomass and global warming level. Without climate change and under a target fishing mortality rate relative to the level required for maximum sustainable yield of 0.75, we project biomass rebuilding of 1.7-2.7 times (interquartile range) of current (average 2014-2018) levels across marine ecoregions. When global warming level is at 1.5 and 2.6°C, respectively, such biomass rebuilding drops to 1.4-2.0 and 1.1-1.5 times of current levels, with 10% and 25% of the ecoregions showing no biomass rebuilding, respectively. Marine ecoregions where biomass rebuilding is largely impacted by climate change are in West Africa, the Indo-Pacific, the central and south Pacific, and the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Coastal communities in these ecoregions are highly dependent on fisheries for livelihoods and nutrition security. Lowering the targeted fishing level and keeping global warming below 1.5°C are projected to enable more climate-sensitive ecoregions to rebuild biomass. However, our findings also underscore the need to resolve trade-offs between climate-resilient

The Mozambique Channel region in East Africa has diverse marine ecosystems and serves as a migratory corridor for economically important species. Local and foreign industrial fisheries operate in the Mozambique Channel, but regional small-scale fisheries are the crucially important fisheries that provide food security, livelihoods, and economic opportunities for rural coastal communities. This study reconstructed and investigated trends in the fishing effort and catch per unit effort (CPUE) of small-scale marine fisheries in four Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) that constitute the Mozambique Channel, i.e., Union of Comoros, Madagascar, Mayotte, and Mozambique, from 1950 to 2016. Effective fishing effort for small-scale fisheries in the form of fishing capacity in kWdays (i.e., kilowatt days) was derived using the number, length, motorization (engine power) by fishing vessels, as well as an approximate human-powered equivalent for shore-based fishers without vessels, as well as days of fishing per year. Effective small-scale fishing effort in the Mozambique Channel increased by nearly 60 times from just over 386,000 kWdays in 1950 to over 23 million kWdays in 2016. Correspondingly, the overall small-scale CPUE, based on previously and independently reconstructed catch data declined by 91% in the region as a whole, from just under 175 kg⋅kWday–1 in the early 1950s to just over 15 kg⋅kWday–1 in recent years. All four EEZs showed the strongest declines in the small-scale CPUE in the earlier decades, driven by motorization and growth in vessel numbers impacting effective fishing effort. Increased motorization combined with a substantial growth in overall vessel numbers were the drivers of the increasing fishing effort and decreasing CPUE, and clearly suggest that continuing to increase the fishing capacity of small-scale fisheries in the absence of effective and restrictive management actions may exacerbate overexploitation risk.

Fishing provides the world with an important component of its food supply, but it also negatively impacts the biodiversity of marine and freshwater ecosystems, especially when industrial fishing is involved. To mitigate these impacts, civil society needs access to fisheries data (i.e., catches and catch-derived indicators of these impacts). Such data, however, must be more comprehensive than the official fisheries statistics supplied to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) by its member countries, which shape public policy in spite of their deficiencies, notably underestimating small-scale fisheries. This article documents the creation, based on the geographically coarse FAO data, of a database and website ( https://www.seaaroundus.org ) that provides free reconstructed (i.e., corrected) catch data by ecosystem, country, species, gear type, commercial value, etc., to any interested person, along with catch-derived indicators from 1950 to the near present for the entire world. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Marine Science, Volume 15 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.