A global, historical database of tuna, billfish, and saury larval distributions

Abstract

Knowing the distribution of fish larvae can inform fisheries science and resource management in several ways, by: 1) providing information on spawning areas; 2) identifying key areas to manage and conserve; and 3) helping to understand how fish populations are affected by anthropogenic pressures, such as overfishing and climate change. With the expansion of industrial fishing activity after 1945, there was increased sampling of fish larvae to help better understand variation in fish stocks. However, large-scale larval records are rare and often unavailable. Here we digitize data from Nishikawa et al. (1985), which were collected from 1956–1981 and are near-global (50°N–50°S), seasonal distribution maps of fish larvae of 18 mainly commercial pelagic taxa of the families Scombridae, Xiphiidae, Istiophoridae, Scombrolabracidae, and Scomberesocidae. Data were collected from the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. We present four seasonal 1° × 1° resolution maps per taxa representing larval abundance per grid cell and highlight some of the main patterns. Data are made available as delimited text, raster, and vector files.

Near-global spawning strategies of large pelagic fish

“…S32). Because not all taxa are identi ed to the species-level in Nishikawa et al (1985) 25 , we followed Buenafe et al (2022) 26 and calculated the mean of the adult predictions of the species listed within each taxon.…”

“…Most data on the larvae of large pelagic sh species are collected from one-off surveys, involve individual species, cover local-to-regional scales, and use different methods 24 . A notable exception is the extensive data set of Nishikawa et al (1985) 25 , which provides an unprecedented window into the spawning strategies of large pelagic sh species, as digitized by Buenafe et al (2022) 26 . This data set spans 40°N through 40°S (at 1°×1° resolution), includes seasonal data collected during surveys from 1956 to 1981, and represents 63,017 samples collected with similar methods.…”

Lead induced structural and functional damage and microbiota dysbiosis in the intestine of crucian carp (Carassius auratus)

“…Fish, as a high tropic level in aquatic ecosystems, are widely present in aquatic environments around the world (Oost et al, 2003 ; Wang et al, 2021 ; Carlos et al, 2022 ; Kristine et al, 2022 ; Souza et al, 2022 ). Because of the accumulation of large amount of water pollutants through the food chain and bioaccumulation, fish are often considered as the suitable bioindicators of contaminated aquatic ecosystem (Yin et al, 2020 ; Mario et al, 2022 ).…”