Sustainable Exploitation of Dominant Fishes in the Largest Estuary in Southeastern China

Abstract

Globally, marine fisheries have declined under multiple stresses including overfishing, climate change, and habitat degradation. The Min River Estuary, as the largest estuary in southeastern China, has confronted this situation over recent decades. In this study, the dominant species of fish stocks in the Min River Estuary, including Coilia mystus, Cynoglossus abbreviates, Collichthys lucidus, Amblychaeturichthys hexanema, Polydactylus sextarius, Harpodon nehereus, and Secutor ruconius, were evaluated by the length-based Bayesian biomass estimator method (LBB). Outcomes could be grouped into three categories as healthy, showing the lowest exploitation rate (E: 0.31–0.43) and highest relative biomass (B/Bmsy: 1.30–1.90), including S. ruconius, C. mystus, and H. nehereus; overfished, with a medium E (0.50–0.58) and B/Bmsy (0.68–0.79), including A. hexanema and C. abbreviates; and collapsed, with the highest E (0.89–0.92) and lowest B/Bmsy (0.03–0.21), including C. lucidus and P. sextarius. Corresponding imperative countermeasures such as using larger-sized mesh gears and reducing fishing intensity should be deployed according to the current status of each species for sustainable fishery exploitation and fish conservation.

Fishery Dynamics, Status, and Rebuilding Based on Catch-Only Data in Coastal Waters of China

“…We have to admit that this measure would probably be a hard decision as a trade-off between economics and conservation, but the fisheries structure will benefit from this, and finally, the catches will be enhanced. Moreover, gears selection must be taken into serious considerations to avoid the capture of juvenile fishes before sexual maturity (Wang et al, 2020).…”

An Integrated Approach to Determine the Stock Structure of Spinyhead Croaker Collichthys lucidus (Sciaenidae) in Chinese Coastal Waters

“…Its high consumption (Hu et al, 2015), flesh quality, and high commercial value make this species of great interest to fishers and fishery managers; in 2007, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs added it to the "List of China State Key Protected Commercial Sources of Aquatic Animals and Plants." In recent years, the yield of C. lucidus has dramatically declined in traditionally fished estuaries, such as Yangtze River Estuary and Minjiang River Estuary (Figure 1), attributed to overfishing (Huang et al, 2010;Hu et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2020). Previous studies of C. lucidus on genetics revealed genetic differentiation, but the boundary of stocks of this species varied (Zheng et al, 2011;Song et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2021), and the results of body morphology showed a single stock for this species (Liang et al, 2018) (more information in Supplementary Table 1).…”