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Toward pristine biomass: Reef fish recovery in coral reef marine protected areas in Kenya

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Tim McClanahan, Nicholas Graham, Michael MacNeil

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Abstract

Identifying the rates of recovery of fish in no-take areas is fundamental to designing protected area networks, managing fisheries, estimating yields, identifying ecological interactions, and informing stakeholders about the outcomes of this management. Here we study the recovery of coral reef fishes through 37 years of protection using a space-for-time chronosequence of four marine national parks in Kenya. Using AIC model selection techniques, we assessed recovery trends using five ecologically meaningful production models: asymptotic, Ricker, logistic, linear, and exponential. There were clear recovery trends with time for species richness, total and size class density, and wet masses at the level of the taxonomic family. Species richness recovered rapidly to an asymptote at 10 years. The two main herbivorous families displayed differing responses to protection, scarids recovering rapidly, but then exhibiting some decline while acanthurids recovered more slowly and steadily throughout the study. Recovery of the two invertebrate-eating groups suggested competitive interactions over resources, with the labrids recovering more rapidly before a decline and the balistids demonstrating a slower logistic recovery. Remaining families displayed differing trends with time, with a general pattern of decline in smaller size classes or small-bodied species after an initial recovery, which suggests that some species- and size-related competitive and predatory control occurs in older closures. There appears to be an ecological succession of dominance with an initial rapid rise in labrids and scarids, followed by a slower rise in balistids and acanthurids, an associated decline in sea urchins, and an ultimate dominance in calcifying algae. Our results indicate that the unfished "equilibrium" biomass of the fish assemblage >10 cm is 1100-1200 kg/ha, but these small parks (<10 km 2) are likely to underestimate pre-human influence values due to edge effects and the rarity of taxa with large area requirement, such as apex predators, including sharks. © 2007 by the Ecological Society of America.


Publication metadata

Author(s): McClanahan TR, Graham NAJ, Calnan JM, MacNeil MA

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Ecological Applications

Year: 2007

Volume: 17

Issue: 4

Pages: 1055-1067

Print publication date: 01/06/2007

ISSN (print): 1051-0761

ISSN (electronic): 1939-5582

Publisher: Ecological Society of America

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/06-1450

DOI: 10.1890/06-1450

PubMed id: 17555218


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