faulker098

Parrotfish (Labridae: Scarini) are large (and beautiful!) herbivorous fishes that play a critical functional role in reef environments when they feed.  By grazing on algae, they actively affect the structure and composition of benthic communities, mainly by maintaining algae  free corals. Even though these species used to have relatively low commercial interest in the past, when others, more appreciated and usually higher in the food chain (e.g.: predators) were available, they are now a favorite target. This is true for many parts of the world, including Brazil, where parrotfish have been increasingly exploited, with many of them already showing signs of depletion. In particular, three species,  Scarus trispinosus  (Valenciennes, 1840),  Sparisoma frondosum  (Agassiz, 1831) and  Sparisoma axillare (Steindachner, 1878), currently labeled as threatened, have been intensively targeted in Brazil, mostly on the northeastern coast.   That means we have to care about parrotfish a

Dr. Rashid Sumaila is a prominent Fisheries Economist and Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada ( http://www.fisheries.ubc.ca/faculty-staff/rashid-sumaila ). He is deeply interested in how economics, through integration with ecology and other disciplines, can be applied to ensure sustainable use of  environmental resources. FEME: Some authors (for example, Acemoglu &Robinson. 2013. Why Nations Fail, 2013) argue that, in general, fewer laws and regulations and less bureaucracy could help nations achieve higher levels of development. Do you agree with this view? Do you think the same principles could be applied to fisheries management? Rashid Sumaila : The problem I see with this statement is that these authors say: “… fewer laws and regulations and less bureaucracy could help nations achieve higher levels of development”. Two questions immediately come to mind. First, what do the authors mean by ‘fewer laws’? Does it mean that if one country has 10 regulations a

According to the United Nations, every year an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic pollution enters our oceans, and fishing nets (10% of all waste) are one of the most harmful forms of this destructive waste. More than 690 marine species are known to interact with marine litter. Turtles mistake floating plastic for jellyfish, and globally around one-third of all turtles are estimated to have eaten plastic in some form. The same is true for seabirds. Plastic also acts as a chemical magnet for environmental pollutants, such as metals, fertilizers, and persistent organic pollutants. These are adsorbed onto the plastic. When an animal eats the plastic “meal”, these chemicals make their way into their tissues and, in the case of commercial fish species, can make it into our dinner plates. Plastic waste is the scourge of our oceans, killing our wildlife, polluting our beaches, and threatening our food security. However, there are solutions!   On the coastline of Chile, the team behi

Since Warren Morrill’s 1967 article addressing the knowledge of the Caribbean fishermen about fish behavior, scientists have studied fishermen’s ecological knowledge on the marine environment. And that is for a good reason, several studies have shown since then that fishermen have detailed historical and current information on ecological, behavioral processes, size and distribution of fish stocks. Fishermen have also provided insights on best ways to manage fisheries. However, the recognition of such knowledge has not been a smooth process by the academia, and the topic is still hotly debated. The article " Matching fishers' knowledgeand landing date to overcome missing data in small-scale fisheries " shows an important use of fishermen's knowledge: it could potentially provide fishing data for data poor areas. Such areas are predominantly tropical developing countries, where small-scale fisheries usually prevail. Such type of fisheries has a multi-species nature, wi