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Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean

Marine reserves can restore fish abundance and diversity in areas impacted by overfishing, but the effectiveness of reserves in developing countries where resources for enforcement are limited, have seldom been evaluated. Here we assess whether the establishment in 1996 of the largest marine reserve...

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Autores principales: Pina-Amargós, Fabián, González-Sansón, Gaspar, Martín-Blanco, Félix, Valdivia, Abel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3932734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24688853
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.274
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author Pina-Amargós, Fabián
González-Sansón, Gaspar
Martín-Blanco, Félix
Valdivia, Abel
author_facet Pina-Amargós, Fabián
González-Sansón, Gaspar
Martín-Blanco, Félix
Valdivia, Abel
author_sort Pina-Amargós, Fabián
collection PubMed
description Marine reserves can restore fish abundance and diversity in areas impacted by overfishing, but the effectiveness of reserves in developing countries where resources for enforcement are limited, have seldom been evaluated. Here we assess whether the establishment in 1996 of the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean, Gardens of the Queen in Cuba, has had a positive effect on the abundance of commercially valuable reef fish species in relation to neighboring unprotected areas. We surveyed 25 sites, including two reef habitats (reef crest and reef slope), inside and outside the marine reserve, on five different months, and over a one-and-a-half year period. Densities of the ten most frequent, highly targeted, and relatively large fish species showed a significant variability across the archipelago for both reef habitats that depended on the month of survey. These ten species showed a tendency towards higher abundance inside the reserve in both reef habitats for most months during the study. Average fish densities pooled by protection level, however, showed that five out of these ten species were at least two-fold significantly higher inside than outside the reserve at one or both reef habitats. Supporting evidence from previously published studies in the area indicates that habitat complexity and major benthic communities were similar inside and outside the reserve, while fishing pressure appeared to be homogeneous across the archipelago before reserve establishment. Although poaching may occur within the reserve, especially at the boundaries, effective protection from fishing was the most plausible explanation for the patterns observed.
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spelling pubmed-39327342014-03-31 Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean Pina-Amargós, Fabián González-Sansón, Gaspar Martín-Blanco, Félix Valdivia, Abel PeerJ Biodiversity Marine reserves can restore fish abundance and diversity in areas impacted by overfishing, but the effectiveness of reserves in developing countries where resources for enforcement are limited, have seldom been evaluated. Here we assess whether the establishment in 1996 of the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean, Gardens of the Queen in Cuba, has had a positive effect on the abundance of commercially valuable reef fish species in relation to neighboring unprotected areas. We surveyed 25 sites, including two reef habitats (reef crest and reef slope), inside and outside the marine reserve, on five different months, and over a one-and-a-half year period. Densities of the ten most frequent, highly targeted, and relatively large fish species showed a significant variability across the archipelago for both reef habitats that depended on the month of survey. These ten species showed a tendency towards higher abundance inside the reserve in both reef habitats for most months during the study. Average fish densities pooled by protection level, however, showed that five out of these ten species were at least two-fold significantly higher inside than outside the reserve at one or both reef habitats. Supporting evidence from previously published studies in the area indicates that habitat complexity and major benthic communities were similar inside and outside the reserve, while fishing pressure appeared to be homogeneous across the archipelago before reserve establishment. Although poaching may occur within the reserve, especially at the boundaries, effective protection from fishing was the most plausible explanation for the patterns observed. PeerJ Inc. 2014-02-20 /pmc/articles/PMC3932734/ /pubmed/24688853 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.274 Text en © 2014 Pina-Amagós et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Pina-Amargós, Fabián
González-Sansón, Gaspar
Martín-Blanco, Félix
Valdivia, Abel
Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean
title Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean
title_full Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean
title_fullStr Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean
title_full_unstemmed Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean
title_short Evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean
title_sort evidence for protection of targeted reef fish on the largest marine reserve in the caribbean
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3932734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24688853
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.274
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