As a further check on their results, the researchers used their population projections to see how well their models could explain differences in shark abundances on fished and unfished reefs, based on how long the unfished reefs had been protected.
The team found that results obtained by all methods of assessing shark populations were in close agreement that sharks are declining rapidly due to fishing.
"Our different approaches all painted a surprisingly consistent picture of the current state of population decline, but also of the potential recovery of these species if they are adequately protected," says Mizue Hisano, the study's lead author.
For the Great Barrier Reef shark populations, the close agreement between the different methods appears to justify management actions to substantially reduce the fishing mortality of reef sharks.
"More broadly, we believe that our study demonstrates that this approach may be applied to a broad range of exploited species for which direct estimates of mortality are ambiguous or lacking, leading to improved estimates of population growth."
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| Contact: Sean Connolly Sean.Connolly@jcu.edu.au 61-074-781-4242 ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies Source:Eurekalert |