Abstract
Funding: NG was supported by a National Research Council Fellowship. Acknowledgments: We thank SERFS staff (particularly MARMAP personnel) for data collection and management, as well as numerous volunteers for field work. We also thank the captains and crews of the R/V Palmetto, R/V Savannah, and the NOAA Ships Nancy Foster and Pisces for their assistance and A. Anton and J. Hare for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
Highlights
Understanding and predicting the distribution and abundance of organisms is a fundamental component of ecology (Legendre and Fortin, 1989)
Temporal pseudo-replication, was likely minimal considering that only a fraction of locations were randomly selected for sampling each year and that reef fish assemblage changes within spatial scales (Karnauskas and Babcock, 2012) similar to the inherent error when setting a trap off the back of a ship in water deeper than 30 m (>50 m difference)
We found that the number of individuals and species of fish caught in the traps decreased over the past 2 decades
Summary
Understanding and predicting the distribution and abundance of organisms is a fundamental component of ecology (Legendre and Fortin, 1989). Anthropogenic impacts affect the abundance and distribution of species (Jackson et al, 2001; Halpern et al, 2008). In marine ecosystems, overfishing can cause substantial reductions of target and bycatch species (Worm et al, 2006), while global warming can alter the community assemblage of fishes (Fodrie et al, 2010). Our ability to quantify and predict the effect of humans on ecosystems is limited because multiple impacts often occur simultaneously and at different scales (Crain et al, 2008). Studies must collect information on the focal community and relevant natural and anthropogenic factors over a meaningful scale, which often means multiple decades and 100 s of kilometers, to quantify the separate and emergent effects of humans on community dynamics
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