Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T12:58:57.523Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Body size, exploitation and conservation of marine organisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

By
Simon Jennings  and
John D. Reynolds
Edited by
Alan G. Hildrew ,
David G. Raffaelli  and
Ronni Edmonds-Brown
Simon Jennings
Affiliation:
Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS)
John D. Reynolds
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University Burnaby
Alan G. Hildrew
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
David G. Raffaelli
Affiliation:
University of York
Ronni Edmonds-Brown
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Aquatic ecologists and conservationists have long been obsessed with trying to understand links between body size, exploitation and conservation (e.g. Adams, 1980; Dickie, Kerr & Schwinghamer, 1987a). There are several reasons for this interest. First, at the individual level, fisheries management for both vertebrate and invertebrate populations tries to minimize the mortality of smaller individuals, in order to increase the probability that individuals have reproduced before they are caught (Jennings, Kaiser & Reynolds, 2001a). Even if other management methods are used, practically every stock assessment that has ever been done on an indeterminately growing species has included size as a key input parameter. Second, at the population level, large-bodied species have life-history traits that lead to slow rates of population turnover, with clear implications for productivity, resilience and recovery potential (Hutchings, 2001; Denney, Jennings & Reynolds, 2002; Reynolds et al., 2005; Goodwin et al., 2006). Third, at the community level, predator–prey relationships are strongly linked to size (Cohen et al., 1993; Woodward & Warren, this volume; Persson & De Roos, this volume), leading to the potential for understanding how fishing mortality may have wider ecosystem impacts through food-web dynamics (Dickie et al., 1987a).

At the population level, studies of the effects of exploitation have long focused on the direct effects of fishing mortality on a single stock, and this is often a pragmatic response to limited information on the indirect effects of mortality on one species affecting other species in the ecosystem (Hilborn & Walters, 1992).

Type
Chapter
Information
Body Size: The Structure and Function of Aquatic Ecosystems , pp. 266 - 285
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, P. B. (1980). Life history patterns in marine fishes and their consequences for management. Fishery Bulletin, 78, 1–12.Google Scholar
Beverton, R. J. H. (1992). Patterns of reproductive strategy parameters in some marine teleost fishes. Journal of Fish Biology, 41 (Supplement B), 137–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beverton, R. J. H. & Holt, S. J. (1957). On the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations, Rep. No. 19. London: Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.Google Scholar
Beverton, R. J. H. & Holt, S. J. (1959). A review of the lifespan and mortality rates of fish in nature and their relationship to growth and other physiological characteristics. Ciba Foundation Colloquim on Ageing, 5, 142–180.Google Scholar
Bianchi, G., Gislason, H., Graham, K.et al. (2000). Impact of fishing on size composition and diversity of demersal fish communities. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 57, 558–571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchard, J. L., Dulvy, N. K., Jennings, S.et al. (2005). Do climate and fishing influence size-based indicators of Celtic Sea fish community structure? ICES Journal of Marine Science, 62, 405–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boudreau, P. R. & Dickie, L. M. (1992). Biomass spectra of aquatic ecosystems in relation to fisheries yield. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 49, 1528–1538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boudreau, P. R., Dickie, L. M. & Kerr, S. R. (1991). Body-size spectra of production and biomass as system-level indicators of ecological dynamics. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 152, 329–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brander, K. (1981). Disappearance of common skate Raia batis from Irish Sea. Nature, 290, 48–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J. H. & Gillooly, J. F. (2003). Ecological food webs: high-quality data facilitate theoretical unification. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100, 1467–1468.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, J. H., Gillooly, J. F., Allen, A. P., Savage, V. M. & West, G. B. (2004). Towards a metabolic theory of ecology. Ecology, 85, 1771–1789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnov, E. L. (1993). Life History Invariants. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. E., Pimm, S. L., Yodzis, P. & Saldaña, J. (1993). Body sizes of animal predators and animal prey in food webs. Journal of Animal Ecology, 62, 67–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J. E., Jonsson, T. & Carpenter, S. R. (2003). Ecological community description using the food web, species abundance and body size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 100, 1781–1786.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cushing, D. H. (1975). Marine Ecology and Fisheries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cyr, H. (2000). Individual energy use and the allometry of population density. In Scaling in Biology, ed. Brown, J. H. and West, G. B.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 267–295.Google Scholar
Daan, N., Gislason, H., Pope, J. G. & Rice, J. C. (2005). Changes in the North Sea fish community: evidence of the indirect effects of fishing? ICES Journal of Marine Science, 62, 177–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damuth, J. (1981). Population density and body size in mammals. Nature, 290, 699–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denney, N. H., Jennings, S. & Reynolds, J. D. (2002). Life history correlates of maximum population growth rates in marine fishes. Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 269, 2229–2237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dickie, L. M. (1976). Predation, yield and ecological efficiency in aquatic food chains. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 33, 313–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickie, L. M., Kerr, S. P. & Schwinghamer, P. (1987a). An ecological approach to fisheries assessment. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 44 (Supplement 2), 68–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickie, L. M., Kerr, S. R. & Boudreau, P. R. (1987b). Size-dependent processes underlying regularities in ecosystem structure. Ecological Monographs, 57, 233–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dulvy, N. K., Polunin, N. V. C.Mill, A. C. & Graham, N. A. J. (2004). Size structural change in lightly exploited reef fish communities: evidence for weak indirect effects. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 61, 466–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dulvy, N. K., Sadovy, Y. & Reynolds, J. D. (2003). Extinction vulnerability in marine populations. Fish and Fisheries, 4, 25–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duplisea, D. E. & Kerr, S. R. (1995). Application of a biomass size spectrum model to demersal fish data from the Scotian shelf. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 177, 263–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duplisea, D. E., Jennings, S., Warr, K. J. & Dinmore, T. A. (2002). A size-based model to predict the impacts of bottom trawling on benthic community structure. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 59, 1785–1795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
FAO (2005). Review of the State of World Marine Fishery Resources. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 457. Rome.
Fenchel, T. (1974). Intrinsic rate of natural increase: the relationship with body size. Oecologia, 14, 317–326.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frank, K. T. & Leggett, W. C. (1994). Fisheries ecology in the context of ecological and evolutionary theory. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 25, 401–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, B. & Quinones, R. B. (1994). Biomass spectra and stable-isotope indicators of trophic level in zooplankton of the northwest Atlantic. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 112, 201–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilkinson, K., Paulin, M., Hurley, S. & Schwinghamer, P. (1998). Impacts of trawl door scouring on infaunal bivalves: results of a physical trawl door model/dense sand interaction. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 224, 291–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillooly, J. F. (2000). Effect of body size and temperature on generation time in zooplankton. Journal of Plankton Research, 22, 241–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillooly, J. F., Brown, J. H., West, G. B., Savage, V. M. & Charnov, E. L. (2001). Effects of size and temperature on metabolic rate. Science, 5538, 2248–2250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillooly, J. F., Charnov, E. L., West, G. B., Savage, V. M. & Brown, J. H. (2002). Effects of size and temperature on developmental time. Nature, 417, 70–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gislason, H. (2002). The effects of fishing on non-target species and ecosystem structure and function. In Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem, ed. Sinclair, M. & Valdimarsson, G.. CAB International, Wallingford, pp. 255–274.Google Scholar
Gislason, H. & Rice, J. C. (1998). Modelling the response of size and diversity spectra of fish assemblages to changes in exploitation. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 55, 362–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, N. B., Grant, A., Perry, A. L., Dulvy, N. K. & Reynolds, J. D. (2006). Life history correlates of density-dependent recruitment in marine fishes. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 63, 494–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodyear, C. P. (1977). Assessing the impact of power plant mortality on the compensatory reserve of fish populations. In Proceedings of the Conference on Assessing the Effects of Power Plant Induced Mortality on Fish Populations, ed. Winkle, W.. New York: Pergamon Press, pp. 186–195.Google Scholar
Harvey, P. H. & Pagel, M. D. (1991). The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heino, M. & Godo, O. R. (2002). Fisheries-induced selection pressures in the context of sustainable fisheries. Bulletin of Marine Science, 70, 639–656.Google Scholar
Hilborn, R. & Walters, C. J. (1992). Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment: Choice, Dynamics and Uncertaincy. New York: Chapman and Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchings, J. A. (2001). Influence of population decline, fishing, and spawner variability on the recovery of marine fishes. Journal of Fish Biology, 59 (Supplement A), 306–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchings J. A. (2002). Life histories of fish. In Handbook of Fish Biology and Fisheries. Vol. 1., ed. Hart, P. J. B. and Reynolds, J. D.. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 149–174.Google Scholar
Hutchings, J. A. & Baum, J. K. (2005). Measuring marine fish biodiversity: temporal changes in abundance, life history and demography. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 360, 315–338.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hutchings, J. A. & Reynolds, J. D. (2004). Marine fish population collapses: consequences for recovery and extinction risk. Bioscience, 54, 297–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S. (2005). Size-based analysis of aquatic food webs. In Aquatic Food Webs: An Ecosystem Approach, ed. Belgrano, A., Scharler, U. M., Dunne, J. and Ulanowicz, R. E.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 86–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S. & Blanchard, J. L. (2004). Fish abundance with no fishing: predictions based on macroecological theory. Journal of Animal Ecology, 73, 632–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S. & Mackinson, S. (2003). Abundance-body mass relationships in size structured food webs. Ecology Letters, 6, 971–974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S., Reynolds, J. D. & Mills, S. C. (1998). Life history correlates of responses to fisheries exploitation. Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 265, 333–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S., Greenstreet, S. P. R. & Reynolds, J. D. (1999). Structural change in an exploited fish community: a consequence of differential fishing effects on species with contrasting life histories. Journal of Animal Ecology, 68, 617–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S., Kaiser, M. J. & Reynolds, J. D. (2001a). Marine Fisheries Ecology. Oxford: Blackwell Science.Google Scholar
Jennings, S., Dinmore, T. A., Duplisea, D. E., Warr, K. J. & Lancaster, J. E. (2001b). Trawling disturbance can modify benthic production processes. Journal of Animal Ecology, 70, 459–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, S., Pinnegar, J. K., Polunin, N. V. C. & Warr, K. J. (2002). Linking size-based and trophic analyses of benthic community structure. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 226, 77–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, R. (1974). Assessing the long-term effects of changes in fishing effort and mesh size from length composition data. ICES CM 1974, pp. 33–47.
Kaiser, M. J. & Groot, S. J. (eds.) (2000). The Effects of Fishing on Non-Target Species and Habitats: Biological, Conservation and Socio-Economic Issues. Oxford: Blackwell Science.Google Scholar
Kaiser, M. J., Ramsay, K., Richardson, C. A., Spence, F. E. & Brand, A. R. (2000). Chronic fishing disturbance has changed shelf sea benthic community structure. Journal of Animal Ecology, 69, 494–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, S. R. (1974). Theory of size distribution in ecological communities. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 31, 1859–1862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, S. R. & Dickie, L. M. (2001). The Biomass Spectrum: a Predator-Prey Theory of Aquatic Production. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Law, R. (1979). Ecological determinants in the evolution of life histories. In Population Dynamics, ed. Anderson, R. M., Turner, B. D. and Taylor, L. R.. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, pp. 81–103.Google Scholar
Law, R. (2000). Fishing, selection and phenotypic evolution. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 57, 659–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, R. & Stokes, T. K. (2000). Evolutionary impacts of fishing on target populations. In Marine Conservation Biology: the Science of Maintaining Biodiversity, ed. Crowder, L. and Norse, E.. Island Press.Google Scholar
Li, B. L. & Charnov, E. L. (2001). Diversity-stability relationships revisited: scaling rules for biological communities near equilibrium. Ecological Modelling, 140, 247–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loeuille, N. & Loreau, M. (2005). Evolutionary emergence of size-structured food webs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 5761–5766.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maxwell, D. & Jennings, S. (2005). Power of monitoring programmes to detect decline and recovery of rare and vulnerable fish. Journal of Applied Ecology, 42, 25–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, R. A., Mertz, G. & Fowlow, P. S. (1997). Maximum population growth rates and recovery times for Atlantic cod Gadus morhua. Fishery Bulletin, 95, 762–772.Google Scholar
Nee, S., Read, A. F., Greenwood, J. J. D. & Harvey, P. H. (1991). The relationship between abundance and body size in British birds. Nature, 351, 312–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pauly, D., Christensen, V., Dalsgaard, J., Froese, R. & Torres, F. (1998). Fishing down marine food webs. Science, 279, 860–863.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pope, J. G., Stokes, T. K., Murawski, S. A. & Idoine, S. I. (1988). A comparison of fish size composition in the North Sea and on Georges Bank. In Ecodynamics: Contributions to Theoretical Ecology, ed. Wolff, W., Soeder, C. J. and Drepper, F. R.. Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 146–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pope, J. G., Rice, J. C., Daan, N., Jennings, S. & Gislason, H. (2006). Modelling an exploited marine fish community with 15 parameters – results from a simple size-based model. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 63, 1029–1044.Google Scholar
Reynolds, J. D. (2003). Life histories and extinction risk. In Macroecology, ed. Blackburn, T. M. and Gaston, K. J.. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 195–217.Google Scholar
Reynolds, J. D. & Peres, C. A. (2006). Overexploitation. In Principles of Conservation Biology, ed. Groom, M., Meffe, G. and Carroll, R.. Massachusetts: Sinauer, Sunderland.Google Scholar
Reynolds, J. D., Dulvy, N. K., Goodwin, N. B. & Hutchings, J. A. (2005). Biology of extinction risk in marine fishes. Proceedings of the Royal Society London, B, 272, 2337–2344.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, J. & Gislason, H. (1996). Patterns of change in the size spectra of numbers and diversity of the North Sea fish assemblage, as reflected in surveys and models. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 53, 1214–1225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roff, D. A. (1992). The Evolution of Life Histories: Theory and Analysis. New York: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Savage, V. M., Gillooly, J. F., Brown, J. H., West, G. B. & Charnov, E. L. (2004). Effects of body size and temperature on population growth. American Naturalist, 163, 429–441.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sheldon, R. W., Prakash, A. & Sutcliffe, W. H. (1972). The size distribution of particles in the ocean. Limnology and Oceanography, 17, 327–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shin, Y. J. & Cury, P. (2004). Using an individual-based model of fish assemblages to study the response of size spectra to changes in fishing. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 61, 414–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shin, Y.-J., Rochet, M.-J., Jennings, S., Field, J. & Gislason, H. (2005). Using size-based indicators to evaluate the ecosystem effects of fishing. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 62, 384–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shuter, P. J. & Abrams, B. J. (eds.) (2005). Building on Beverton's legacy: life history variation and fisheries management. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 62, 725–902.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, M. & Valdimarsson, G. (2003). Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem. Rome: FAO.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, T. K., McGlade, J. M. & Law, R. eds. (1993). The Exploitation of Evolving Resources. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thiebaux, M. L. & Dickie, L. M. (1993). Structure of the body size spectrum of the biomass in aquatic ecosystems: a consequence of allometry in predator-prey interactions. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 50, 1308–1317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thygesen, U. H., Farnsworth, K. D., Anderson, K. H. & Beyer, J. E. (2005). How optimal life history changes with the community size-spectrum. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272, 1323–1331.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ware, D. M. (2000). Aquatic ecosystems: properties and models. In Fisheries Oceanography: An Integrative Approach to Fisheries Ecology and Management, ed. Harrison, P. J. and Parsons, T. R.. Oxford: Blackwell Science, pp. 161–194.Google Scholar
Watson, R. & Pauly, D. (2001). Systematic distortions in world fisheries catches. Nature, 414, 534–536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×