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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Fabrice StephensonORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 The Author(s). Fisheries Management and Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) are typically fragile and slow to recover, thereby making them susceptible to disturbance, including fishing. In the high seas, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) requested regional fishery management organisations (RFMOs) to implement measures to prevent significant adverse impacts on VMEs. Here, we predict spatial abundances of 15 taxa, 13 VME indicator taxa, in the South Pacific RFMO (SPRFMO) area. Models used seafloor imagery data, an important advance on previously developed presence-only predictions, to provide information on spatial variation in taxa abundance that is crucial for better inferring likely location of VMEs, rather than just distribution of VME indicator taxa. Abundance models varied in predictive power (mean R2 ranged 0.02–0.40). Uncertainty estimates of model predictions were developed to inform future spatial planning processes for conservation and management of VMEs. Using the VME index concept, abundance model outputs and previously published presence-only model predictions were weighted using vulnerability scores, to explore how modelled outputs could provide spatial estimates of likely VME distribution. Spatial predictions of abundance improved on previous modelling to provide an almost complete suite of abundance models for VME indicator taxa in the western portion of the SPRFMO Convention area. Nevertheless, to improve utility of modelled outputs, we recommend more high-quality seafloor imagery data be gathered within the SPRFMO Convention area to (1) validate abundance models developed here with independent data from the model area, (2) update models, if necessary, (3) link abundance information to ecosystem function and (4) explore validity of the adapted VME index approach used here.
Author(s): Bennion M, Rowden A, Anderson O, Bowden D, Clark M, Althaus F, Williams A, Geange S, Tablada J, Stephenson F
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Fisheries Management and Ecology
Year: 2024
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 02/11/2024
Acceptance date: 27/09/2024
Date deposited: 12/11/2024
ISSN (print): 0969-997X
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2400
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/fme.12751
DOI: 10.1111/fme.12751
Data Access Statement: The datasets generated in this research will be shared on request to the corresponding author. Much of the R code used to develop this work is freely available online. See Stephenson, Rowden, et al. (2021), Stephenson, Bowden, et al. (2023) and Gros et al. (2023) for details.
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