Reef Fishery

A reef fishery targets coral-reef species, mainly groupers, snappers, emperors, parrotfish, and wrasses, with handlines, traps, spearguns, gillnets, and small nets, almost always as part of small-scale or subsistence fishing. Reef fisheries are multispecies and data-poor, so they are managed with size limits, gear restrictions, spawning-aggregation closures, and no-take marine protected areas rather than single-species quota. Heavy fishing removes large predators and herbivores and, combined with the live reef fish trade and destructive cyanide and blast fishing, shifts reef ecosystems and erodes the herbivory that keeps coral dominant over algae. Many target species are slow-growing and prone to recruitment overfishing.