High Value and Long Life—Double Jeopardy for Tunas and Billfishes

Collette, Bruce B.; Carpenter, Kent E.; Polidoro, Beth; Juan‐Jordá, Maria José; Boustany, André M.; Die, David J.; Elfes, Cristiane T.; Fox, William W.; Graves, John E.; Harrison, Lucy R.; Mcmanus, Roger; Minte-Vera, Carolina V.; Nelson, Russell S.; Restrepo, Victor; Schratwieser, Jason; Sun, Chi‐Lu; Amorim, Alberto Ferreira de; Peres, Mônica Brick; Canales, Cristian; Cárdenas, Giovanni; Chang, Shui-Kai; Chiang, Wei‐Chuan; Leite, Nilamon de Oliveira; Harwell, Heather; Lessa, Rosângela; Lucena‐Frédou, Flávia; Oxenford, Hazel A.; Serra, Rodolfo; Shao, Kwang‐Tsao; Sumaila, Rashid; Wang, S.-P.; Watson, Reg; Yáñez, Eleuterio

doi:10.1126/science.1208730

Cited by 249 publications

(203 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…It is for this reason that we do not present T values for skipjack tuna. Although many species severely threatened by fishing are weak stocks or by-catch species in multispecies fisheries (6-9), a few target species, such as southern bluefin tuna (17) and caviar-producing sturgeons (19), are threatened by their high and increasing rarity value (19). Our approach is also not designed to predict indirect threats from fishing mediated by species interactions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Internationally cooperative management of large high-seas fisheries can be challenging (2, 3), but will be critical to protecting weak stocks and by-catch species in tuna and billfish fisheries (7,17,23,24,(53)(54)(55). Managing each fishery to protect its most vulnerable species is one possible solution (56).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16) have been developed to forecast the impacts of some fisheries, but these are often data intensive. Some of the characteristics that make a population susceptible to overfishing are well known-for example, low population growth rates (3-11, 17, 18), high value and/or low fishing costs (10,11,(17)(18)(19), and schooling behavior (18). Recently, some correlative approaches based on these characteristics have been developed for assessing likely relative threats to data-poor species (4,(20)(21)(22).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…High-seas tuna and billfish have elicited recent conservation concern due to significant population declines and range contractions found in many species (17,23,24). Three of the populations in our study, bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) and both the northern and the southern striped marlin (Tetrapturus audax) populations, have been recently identified as experiencing overfishing-meaning their exploitation rates have exceeded the MSY exploitation rate (F MSY ) (24)(25)(26)(27).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Predicting overfishing and extinction threats in multispecies fisheries

Burgess¹,

Polasky

Tilman

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Threats to species from commercial fishing are rarely identified until species have suffered large population declines, by which time remedial actions can have severe economic consequences, such as closure of fisheries. Many of the species most threatened by fishing are caught in multispecies fisheries, which can remain profitable even as populations of some species collapse. Here we show for multispecies fisheries that the biological and socioeconomic conditions that would eventually cause species to be severely depleted or even driven extinct can be identified decades before those species experience high harvest rates or marked population declines. Because fishing effort imposes a common source of mortality on all species in a fishery, the long-term impact of a fishery on a species is predicted by measuring its loss rate relative to that of species that influence the fishery's maximal effort. We tested our approach on eight Pacific tuna and billfish populations, four of which have been identified recently as in decline and threatened with overfishing. The severe depletion of all four populations could have been predicted in the 1950s, using our approach. Our results demonstrate that species threatened by human harvesting can be identified much earlier, providing time for adjustments in harvesting practices before consequences become severe and fishery closures or other socioeconomically disruptive interventions are required to protect species.early warning | preventative management | overharvesting | mechanistic | assessment

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Predicting overfishing and extinction threats in multispecies fisheries

Burgess¹,

Polasky

Tilman

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Worldwide, tunas have been exploited because of their high market values, causing concern about the state of the wild stocks (3). The investigation of the openocean lifestyle of tuna is therefore a major issue from the view of ocean-wide resource management and conservation policies.…”

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confidence: 99%

Evolutionary changes of multiple visual pigment genes in the complete genome of Pacific bluefin tuna

Nakamura

Mori

Saitoh

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

108

110

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Tunas are migratory fishes in offshore habitats and top predators with unique features. Despite their ecological importance and high market values, the open-ocean lifestyle of tuna, in which effective sensing systems such as color vision are required for capture of prey, has been poorly understood. To elucidate the genetic and evolutionary basis of optic adaptation of tuna, we determined the genome sequence of the Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis), using next-generation sequencing technology. A total of 26,433 protein-coding genes were predicted from 16,802 assembled scaffolds. From these, we identified five common fish visual pigment genes: red-sensitive (middle/long-wavelength sensitive; M/LWS), UV-sensitive (short-wavelength sensitive 1; SWS1), blue-sensitive (SWS2), rhodopsin (RH1), and green-sensitive (RH2) opsin genes. Sequence comparison revealed that tuna's RH1 gene has an amino acid substitution that causes a short-wave shift in the absorption spectrum (i.e., blue shift). Pacific bluefin tuna has at least five RH2 paralogs, the most among studied fishes; four of the proteins encoded may be tuned to blue light at the amino acid level. Moreover, phylogenetic analysis suggested that gene conversions have occurred in each of the SWS2 and RH2 loci in a short period. Thus, Pacific bluefin tuna has undergone evolutionary changes in three genes (RH1, RH2, and SWS2), which may have contributed to detecting blue-green contrast and measuring the distance to prey in the blue-pelagic ocean. These findings provide basic information on behavioral traits of predatory fish and, thereby, could help to improve the technology to culture such fish in captivity for resource management.tuna genome | visual system | animal opsin

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