Journal
REGIONAL STUDIES IN MARINE SCIENCE
Volume 41, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.rsma.2020.101605
Keywords
Plotosidae; Swan-Canning; Peel-Harvey; Leschenault; Shifting baseline; Marine historical ecology
Categories
Funding
- Western Australian Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The decline of Estuary Cobbler stocks in south-western Australia since European settlement of the region in 1829 is attributed to historical overfishing and severe habitat degradation, with two stocks disappearing and one persisting at a low level. It is suggested that exploitation acted synergistically with environmental impacts to cause each stock decline, highlighting the importance of precautionary fisheries management in degraded environments.
The decline of Estuary Cobbler (Cnidoglanis macrocephalus) stocks in south-western Australia since European settlement of the region in 1829 is described, based on evidence from historical documents, fishery statistics and scientific surveys. Estuary cobbler is a relatively large, long-lived, benthic carnivore that was once abundant in the three largest west coast estuaries, where it was a major component of fishery catches for decades. The breeding stock in each estuary declined dramatically between 1960 and 2000, after which time exploitation effectively ceased. Two stocks appear to have largely disappeared, while the third still persists at a relatively low level. In each estuary historical overfishing coincided with a period of severe habitat degradation including flow modification, eutrophication, benthic habitat loss and hypoxia. Hence there is no obvious, primary driver of decline for these stocks. Exploitation probably acted synergistically with environmental impacts to cause each stock decline. In degraded environments, fisheries management should be highly precautionary to reflect the elevated risk to exploited species posed by multiple simultaneous stressors. A risk based 'weight-of-evidence' approach that can accommodate both quantitative and qualitative lines of evidence, including fishing and non-fishing impacts, is recommended to assess the status of exploited species in such environments. Crown Copyright (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available