Evaluating Species at Risk in Data-Limited Fisheries: A Productivity-Susceptibility Analysis for Marine Aquarium Fish

Authors

• Gabrielle A. Baillargeon, University of Leeds
• Alice A. Wynn, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Jemelyn Grace P. Baldisimo, Old Dominion University
• Michael F. Tlusty, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Andrew L. Rhyne, Roger Williams University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1002/eap.70272

Publication Title

Ecological Applications

Volume

36

Issue

4

Pages

e70272

Abstract

The marine aquarium trade (MAT) is a significant global industry harvesting millions of wild-caught, live coral reef fishes for public and private aquaria markets in the United States and Europe annually, while supporting fisher livelihoods in the Indo-Pacific. This diverse and species-rich trade is considered data-limited, creating barriers to quantifying the current and future socio-ecological sustainability of the fishery. We present a revised and expanded productivity–susceptibility analysis (PSA) that serves as a holistic risk assessment to estimate the vulnerability of marine aquarium fish to overfishing. Our global analysis includes 306 species that are actively in trade. Improvements to the PSA framework from previous research including novel susceptibility factors, methods to overcome missing data for individual species factors, and assessing a large, diverse group of marine fish under a single, targeted assessment framework. Our results show that an overwhelming 81.4% of species evaluated fall into the least or moderately vulnerable classification, while the remaining species (n = 57) have higher vulnerability scores designating them as high priority for localized assessment and management initiatives. Most teleost fish in the trade are considered sustainable, while eels and elasmobranchs have the highest vulnerability scores. A comparative case study between our PSA and the popular FishBase vulnerability tool illustrates how the latter can be ill-suited to handle the data limitations common to nonfood fishes. Our study demonstrates how the PSA is a robust, data-limited fishery assessment to prioritize species in the MAT for further assessment, monitoring, and management.

Rights

© 2026 The Authors.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Data Availability

Article states: "Data are available in Zenodo as follows: productivity–susceptibility analysis dataset (Baldisimo et al., 2025, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17468588); dataset compiled from IUCN data for the accessed species (Baldisimo, 2025, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17468611); all PSA factor data sources (Wynn et al., 2025, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17468677). Additionally, volume in trade was extracted from the aquariumtradedata.org database (Rhyne et al., 2015), and these data are compiled in Baillargeon et al. (2026) in Zenodo at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20035439. Model code (gbaillargeon, 2026) is available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18941035."

Original Publication Citation

Baillargeon, G. A., Wynn, A. A., Baldisimo, J. G. P., Tlusty, M. F., & Rhyne, A. L. (2026). Evaluating species at risk in data-limited fisheries: A productivity-susceptibility analysis for marine aquarium fish. Ecological Applications, 36(4), Article e70272. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70272

Repository Citation

Baillargeon, Gabrielle A.; Wynn, Alice A.; Baldisimo, Jemelyn Grace P.; Tlusty, Michael F.; and Rhyne, Andrew L., "Evaluating Species at Risk in Data-Limited Fisheries: A Productivity-Susceptibility Analysis for Marine Aquarium Fish" (2026). Biological Sciences Faculty Publications. 701.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/biology_fac_pubs/701

ORCID

0000-0002-3615-025X (Baldisimo)