Download - ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Media ReleaseOf urchins and rovingbanditsIn an article in the leading journal Science an international team of researchers say that highly mobilefi shing enterprises – which they describe as ‘roving bandits’ – are plundering marine resources at anunsustainable rate, threatening the collapse of ecosystems and eroding the ability to sea-life to withstandclimate change. The raiders clean out entire fisheries and then move on to the next resource beyond thereach of local authorities, in a worldwide marine version of the “tragedy of the commons”, warn 15 leadingecologists, social scientists and resource economists.“What makes roving banditry different from most commons dilemmas is that a new dynamic has arisenin the globalized world: new markets can develop so rapidly that the speed of resource exploitation oftenoverwhelms the ability of local institutions to respond,” says Professor Fikret Berkes of the University ofManitoba, Canada.“Today, the intense targeting of key species by these mobile roving bandits can seriously destabilizemarine systems, causing unpredictable collapses,” warns Professor Terry Hughes, Director of theAustralian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef StudiesThe study cites the case of a sea urchin fishery in Maine, USA. “The urchins underwent a boom followingthe collapse of the cod fishery, then were targeted for the sushi market and collapsed in turn withinsix years. The sea urchin fi shery in Maine resulted in one of the largest ecosystem-scale changes in acoastal zone attributable to a single fishery. The ripple effects are seen throughout Maine's 3000 milecoastline," adds Prof. Bob Steneck of Maine University, who is also a Partner Investigator in the ARCCentre.“Ecologically, the consequences of roving banditry are clear: the simplification of food webs andloss of biodiversity are eroding the resilience of marine ecosystems and increasing their vulnerabilityto environmental change,” says Professor David Bellwood, a senior researcher at the ARC Centre ofExcellence for Coral Reef Studies.“Depletion of herbivorous fishes has contributed to algal blooms on reefs because algae released fromtheir consumers out-compete corals for space. Consequently, overfi shed reefs are less resilient torecurrent disturbances such as hurricanes, and more vulnerable to coral bleaching and mortality caused byglobal warming,” says Prof. Bellwood.“Even the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the largest in the world, is too small to fully maintain all theturtles, fish and sharks that swim in and out of its boundaries,” adds Australia’s Prof. Hughes.The 15 researchers are calling for urgent action at global, regional, national and local scales to bringoverfi shing under control and prevent fresh disasters. This includes enforcing local property rights andlicensing, closing areas to fishing, reforming markets and using fl exible management approaches that canadapt quickly to changing circumstances.“It will also require extensive education and behavioural change in the consumers whose demands drivethe industry economically”, Professor Bellwood adds.17 March 200623