Fish expert David Secor, Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, outlined his findings on electronic tag data and the complex behavior in fish populations during the ICES Annual Science Conference, on September 21-25, 2015, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The forum brings together the international community of marine scientists, socio-economists, and students to come together to discuss the science for sustainable seas.

Secor brought to light that electronic tag data is showing that populations of fish contain sub-groups with different migratory behavior.

“Firstly, populations actually have structure. This structure contains sub-groups that have different seasonal migration behaviors…we are beginning to see this, with digital age discoveries, in fish populations; there are resident and migratory groups,” according to Secor.

This discovery casts doubt on the effectiveness of fisheries’ geographic boundaries, which is how the fisheries are managed but the new discoveries are challenging the idea that populations of marine fish species stay neatly in the boundaries.

“This is important because we have to regulate jurisdictional fisheries and we have to know how many fish are harvested so we can make sure not too many fish are caught,” stated Secor.

Secor was hopeful that the advances that they are finding from the tagging data will allow for scientific understanding of fish life patterns in the oceans in order to help develop maintainable marine stewardship.

“What this suggests is a possible opportunity to build stability by conserving this kind of structure in populations. This structure can actually help buffer the population against future change,” Secor observed.

For recreational fishing, the data could also affect how catch is regulated in order to prevent too many fish being removed from the seas. Although recreational fishing does not have as large of an effect on the fish populations, too many fish removed disrupts the population’s ability to renew itself.

With the trend of increased demand for global fish consumption and ever changing fishing policy for fisheries and recreational fishing, it is important to consider the new data as it could influence the way that fishing is managed in the future in order to maintain sustainable marine stewardship.

 

fish, Fisheries, Fishing

By Hailey Green

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