Document Type
Article
Department/Program
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Publication Date
2016
Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume
11
Issue
2
Abstract
Excessive truncation of a population's size structure is often identified as an important deleterious effect of exploitation, yet the effect on population persistence of size-structure truncation caused by exploitation is often not quantified due to data limitations. In this study, we estimate changes in eggs per recruit (EPR)using annual length-frequency samples over a 9 year period to assess persistence of the two most important recreational fishes in southern Angola: west coast dusky kob (Argyrosomus coronus) and leerfish (Lichia amia). Using a length-and age-structured model, we improve on an existing method to fit this type of model to length-frequency data and estimate EPR. The objectives of the methodological changes are to add flexibility and robustness to the approach for assessing population status in data-limited situations. Results indicate that dusky kob presents very low levels of EPR (5%-10% of the per recruit reproductive capacity in the absence of fishing) in 2013, whereas large inter-annual variability in leerfish estimates suggest caution must be applied when drawing conclusions about its exploitation status. Using simulated length frequency data with known parameter values, we demonstrate that recruitment decline due to overexploitation leads to overestimation of EPR values. Considering the low levels of EPR estimated for the study species, recruitment limitation is not impossible and true EPR values may be even lower than our estimates. It is, therefore, likely that management action, such as the creation of Marine Protected Areas, is needed to reconstitute the west coast dusky kob population.
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0147834
Keywords
BENGUELA FRONTAL ZONE; MARINE PROTECTED AREA; STOCK-ASSESSMENT; MATERNAL-AGE; LIFE-HISTORY; MANAGEMENT; FLUCTUATIONS; RECRUITMENT; SELECTION; SURVIVAL
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Sponsor
JB and DMK were supported by the AMPED project (www.amped.ird.fr) through a grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR), Systerra Programme, grant number ANR-08-STRA-03. WP and CVS were supported by the National Research Foundation under grant number 66957 and by the National Research Foundations Knowledge Field Development South African Biosystems Initiative under grant number 74457. This work was performed in part using computational facilities at the College of William and Mary which were provided with the assistance of the National Science Foundation, the Virginia Port Authority, Sun Microsystems, and Virginia's Commonwealth Technology Research Fund.
Recommended Citation
Beckensteiner J, Kaplan DM, Potts WM, Santos CV, O’Farrell MR (2016) Data-Limited Population-Status Evaluation of Two Coastal Fishes in Southern Angola Using Recreational Catch Length-Frequency Data. PLoS ONE 11(2): e0147834. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147834
