Sixth Larkin Lecture: 2003 at The Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia

Reef fish fisheries provide food and livelihoods for millions of people throughout the tropics. Like most small-scale fisheries, they are more efficient, less wasteful of bycatch and fuel and more productive, per tonne of fish produced, than industrial-scale fisheries. Yet few reef fish fisheries are managed or monitored and many face serious declines from reef degradation, overfishing and illegal fishing. Nonetheless, even though pressure on these resources is mounting, especially from high demand in luxury export markets, there appears to be little momentum towards implementing coastal management to address the problems. These trends are exacerbated because many of the species involved in these fisheries have life histories poorly adapted to heavy rates of extraction, and a few might even be threatened with extinction if exploitation cannot be controlled. For example, species that aggregate to spawn at relatively few specific times and places each year are easy to find and catch in massive numbers, while naturally rare species may fetch high prices in luxury export markets. Yet typically reef fish fisheries are undervalued with little incentive to manage or conserve them. This paper explores why management is so poorly developed for most tropical reef fisheries, the relevance of conventional stock assessment approaches to their management, and the prognosis for the current situation to change. It is argued that reef fish fisheries are particularly susceptible to overexploitation and that one of the major factors impeding progress in their management is due to the low social and economic values ascribed them. A generally poor understanding of the worth and vulnerability of such resources, combined with lack of management capacity, is creating serious problems for reef fish fisheries.

Larkin Lectures

Sixth Larkin Lecture: 2003

Abstract