Fishing elevates variability in the abundance of exploited species

Chih-hao Hsieh, Christian S. Reiss, John R. Hunter, John R. Beddington, Robert M. May and George Sugihara ()
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Chih-hao Hsieh: University of California, San Diego
Christian S. Reiss: National Marine Fisheries Service
John R. Hunter: University of California, San Diego
John R. Beddington: Imperial College London
Robert M. May: University of Oxford
George Sugihara: University of California, San Diego

Nature, 2006, vol. 443, issue 7113, 859-862

Abstract: What fishing does to fish Fishing depletes fish stocks by removing fish from the sea. Clear enough, but in the late 1970s, theorists suggested that it also reduces the resilience of fish populations in the face of change. Discussion on the topic has remained theoretical until now: the availability of a 50-year larval fish survey of waters off California, begun when sardine populations there collapsed in the 1940s, provides the data. And it seems that fishing does magnify population variability (reducing resilience) in ways that extend beyond the removals themselves. A truncated age structure, with larger and older fish being removed first, is the likely cause. This suggests that to avoid collapse, fisheries must be managed not only to sustain total biomass, but also to maintain the age structure of a population.

Date: 2006
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DOI: 10.1038/nature05232

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