New BSc Thesis!

ANTHONY PUIGROS

Distance to the marine protected area boundary
predicts the naïve behaviour to the recreational
fishing gears in a Mediterranean exploited fish
species

Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) play a key role enhancing and maintaining
natural wild populations subjected to human disturbances thorough exporting
biomass, in form of adults and early life-stages, to surrounded areas. This exported
biomass keeps stable the biodiversity of populations exposed to the impact of
human (fishing, pollution, habitat loss ...). Also, it allows the enrichment of
surrounded areas to the MPA, directly increasing catch rates by commercial and
recreational fisheries; and therefore the MPA's supposes ecological and economic
benefits. In a recent study, focused on spear-fishing (Januchowski-Hartley et al.,
2013), it has been observed that the biomass exported outside the reserve has a
high degree of boldness and curiosity to the fishing gears due the strict control of
fishing activities performed inside the protected area, even this fish biomass has
become more vulnerable to fishing years. In this study, it has been done an study
the Palma Bay Marine reserve where the researchers wanted to check if the same
pattern occurs in recreational fishing as hook and line, through an autonomous
underwater video recording device, for the species Serranus scriba, Diplodus
annularis, Coris julis and Chromis chromis; using the distance to the boundary (D)
as a independent variable and a parameter named as Latency Time (LT), time
taken for an individual since that appears to bite the bait, as a dependent variable.
The most significant obtained results are from Serranus scriba: individuals located
in close areas to the MPA show low values, and as the D increases so does the LT.
So, D can act as an indicative of fish behavior as S. scriba front recreational fishing.
Suggesting that this results contradict, in part, with conservationist origin of MPA
as biomass exported to outside the reserve has a lower probability to survive from
fishing.
BSc Puigros.pdf (594,7 kB)