Many nearshore fish and invertebrate populations are overexploited even when apparently coherent management structures are in place. One potential cause of mismanagement may be a poor understanding and accounting of stochasticity, particularly for stock recruitment. Many of the fishes and invertebrates that comprise nearshore fisheries are relatively sedentary as adults but have an obligate lar...

Detailed mass balance food web models were constructed to compare ecosystem characteristics for three Alaska regions: the eastern Bering Sea (EBS), the Gulf of Alaska (GOA), and the Aleutian Islands (AI). This paper documents the methods and data used to construct the models and compares ecosystem structure and indicators across models. The common modeling framework, including biomass pool and ...

The temporal and spatial distributions of sardine Sardinops sagax eggs and larvae off the oligotrophic southwestern coast of Australia were examined and related to gonadosomatic index, daily growth rates of larvae and regional biological oceanography. Seasonal environmental cycles were established from remotely sensed sea surface temperature and chlorophyll concentration, wind and sea surface h...

The ocean sunfish (Mola mola) is the world's heaviest bony fish reaching a body mass of up to 2.3 tonnes. However, the prey M. mola consumes to fuel this prodigious growth remains poorly known. Sunfish were thought to be obligate gelatinous plankton feeders, but recent studies suggest a more generalist diet. In this study, through molecular barcoding and for the first time, the diet of sunfish ...

Directed fishing effort for Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), their primary spawning grounds in the western Atlantic, has been prohibited since the 1980s due to a precipitous decline of the spawning stock biomass. However, pelagic longlines targeted at other species, primarily yellowfin tuna and swordfish, continue to catch Atlantic bluefin tuna in the GOM as bycatch. Spatial a...

The hypothesis that reef fish larvae have some influence on their dispersal is examined by direct observations of pelagic processes. For this purpose, we utilized highresolution and quasi-synoptic measurements of current and ichthyoplankton fields in the vicinity of the island of Barbados, West Indies. The study was conducted during May of 1996 and 1997, in an area extending approximately 15 km...

SEAPODYM is a model developed initially for investigating spatial tuna population dynamics under the influence of both fishing and environmental effects. The model is based on advection-diffusion-reaction equations. The main features of this model are i) forcing by environmental data (either observed or modeled), ii) prediction of both temporal and spatial distribution of age-structured populat...

Conservation diagnosis should identify which demographic parameters (or vital rates) are having a negative effect on the population growth rate of a threatened organism. Diagnosis can analyse how the environment is influencing the vital rates of this organism. In the present study, we tried to improve the diagnosis of a critically endangered seabird, the Balearic shearwater Puffinus mauretanicu...

Atlantic white marlin (Tetrapturus albidus Poey, 1860) are targeted by a directed recreational fishery and occur as incidental bycatch in commercial fisheries throughout the warm pelagic waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Total reported recreational and commercial landings of white marlin peaked at 4911 metric tons (t) in the mid-1960s, declined steadily during the next 15 years, and have since fluc...

Methylmercury (MeHg) is a contaminant of global concern that bioaccumulates and bioamagnifies in marine food webs. Lower trophic level fauna are important conduits of MeHg from sediment and water to estuarine and coastal fish harvested for human consumption. However, the sources and pathways of MeHg to these coastal fisheries are poorly known particularly the potential for transfer of MeHg from...