Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities

@article{Myers2003RapidWD,
  title={Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities},
  author={Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2003},
  volume={423},
  pages={280-283}
}
Serious concerns have been raised about the ecological effects of industrialized fishing, spurring a United Nations resolution on restoring fisheries and marine ecosystems to healthy levels. However, a prerequisite for restoration is a general understanding of the composition and abundance of unexploited fish communities, relative to contemporary ones. We constructed trajectories of community biomass and composition of large predatory fishes in four continental shelf and nine oceanic systems… Expand
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Extinction, survival or recovery of large predatory fishes
  • R. Myers, B. Worm
  • Biology, Medicine
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
  • 2005
TLDR
It is concluded that management of multi–species fisheries needs to be tailored to the most sensitive, rather than the more robust species, to initiate recovery of severely depleted communities. Expand
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In recent years, it has become apparent that human impacts have altered community structure in coastal and marine ecosystems worldwide. Of these, fishing is one of the most pervasive, and a growing… Expand
Chapter 12 the requirements of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management
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The increasing public awareness of environmental issues has led to the recognition that marine ecosystems provide marketable fish and shellfish and a whole range of other “goods and services” to humans, and research has documented that some of these good and services may be at risk at current levels of fishing effort. Expand
Marine fisheries as ecological experiments
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To highlight the value of marine fisheries data, a review of leading ecological theories that have been empirically tested using such data is reviewed and two barriers to use of fisheries data to answer ecological questions are addressed. Expand
Dietary niche expansion of a kelp forest predator recovering from intense commercial exploitation.
TLDR
Examining historical diet data and a time series of benthic community composition, it is concluded that changes in dietary niche breadth are more likely due to the recovery of size structure from fishing than major shifts in prey availability. Expand
Ecological repercussions of historical fish extraction from the Southern Ocean
A major mid-1980s shift in ecological structure of significant portions of the Southern Ocean was partially due to the serial depletion of fish by intensive industrial fishing, rather than solely to… Expand
Analysis of Large Predator Populations in the Line Islands
Human disturbance and reef health are inextricably linked. Specifically, the biomass of predators in a marine ecosystem has been identified as an indicator of overall reef health. Less affected reefs… Expand
Fishery-Independent Data Reveal Negative Effect of Human Population Density on Caribbean Predatory Fish Communities
TLDR
This study analyzed presence and diversity of predatory reef fishes over a gradient of human population density across the greater Caribbean region to fill a fundamentally important gap in knowledge of the ecosystem effects of artisanal fisheries in developing nations. Expand
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