Document Type

Abstract

Publication Date

2025

Publication Title

Bulletin of Marine Science

Volume

101

Issue

1

Pages

805

Conference Name

5th Asia Pacific Coral Reef Symposium, 19th-23rd June 2023, Nus, Singapore

Abstract

The marine aquarium trade (MAT) harvests millions of coral reef fishes from the wild yearly. While the MAT supports fishers, hobbyists and marine education, harvested fishes are crucial in maintaining coral reef health and balanced marine cycles within their native habitats. Understanding the impact of the MAT on fish populations is critical for sustaining the trade in the long-term. Productivity-susceptibility analyses (PSAs) offer semiquantitative methods of analyzing the productive capacity of each fish stock, as well as its susceptibility to overfishing. The present study revises and expands upon a PSA conducted by Baillargeon et al. (2020) that focused on 32 key species within the MAT. We present an updated PSA model of the top 250 MAT species by annual trade volume, accounting for approximately 92.5% of traded species overall. For each fish, vulnerability to aquarium trade harvest is influenced by various productivity (life history) and susceptibility (harvest) factors and presented as a vulnerability score. Subsequent vulnerability scores were applied to a Gaussian mixture model clustering algorithm in order to visualize the comparative sustainability of species. For many species, data availability was limited or entirely unavailable in the literature for one or more factors, worsening relative to decreasing MAT abundance. In these cases, factors were generalized at the genus or family level for a particular species. This quantitative uncertainty is built into the model and is reflected in species' scores. This PSA provides useful information to MAT stakeholders, and can provide support to inform sustainable decision-making throughout the trade.

Comments

A part of: "Abstracts - 5th Asia Pacific Coral Reef Symposium," available online: https://doi.org/10.5343/bms.2024.0122

Rights

© 2025 The Authors.

Published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.

Original Publication Citation

Rhyne, A., Wynn, A., Baldisimo, J., Baillargeon, G., & Tlusty, M. (2025). Addressing the productivity-susceptibility analysis in data-limited fisheries for understudied fish in the marine aquarium trade. Bulletin of Marine Science, 101(1), 805. https://doi.org/10.5343/bms.2024.0122

ORCID

0000-0002-3615-025X (Baldisimo)

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