Abstract
Artificial reefs are used by many fisheries managers as a tool to mitigate the impact of fisheries on coastal fish communities by providing new habitat for many exploited fish species. However, the comparison between the behavior of wild fish inhabiting either natural or artificial habitats has received less attention. Thus the spatio-temporal patterns of fish that establish their home range in one habitat or the other and their consequences of intra-population differentiation on life-history remain largely unexplored. We hypothesize that individuals with a preferred habitat (i.e. natural vs. artificial) can behave differently in terms of habitat use, with important consequences on population dynamics (e.g. life-history, mortality, and reproductive success). Therefore, using biotelemetry, 98 white seabream (Diplodus sargus) inhabiting either artificial or natural habitats were tagged and their behavior was monitored for up to eight months. Most white seabreams were highly resident either on natural or artificial reefs, with a preference for the shallow artificial reef subsets. Connectivity between artificial and natural reefs was limited for resident individuals due to great inter-habitat distances. The temporal behavioral patterns of white seabreams differed between artificial and natural reefs. Artificial-reef resident fish had a predominantly nocturnal diel pattern, whereas natural-reef resident fish showed a diurnal diel pattern. Differences in diel behavioral patterns of white seabream inhabiting artificial and natural reefs could be the expression of realized individual specialization resulting from differences in habitat configuration and resource availability between these two habitats. Artificial reefs have the potential to modify not only seascape connectivity but also the individual behavioral patterns of fishes. Future management plans of coastal areas and fisheries resources, including artificial reef implementation, should therefore consider the potential effect of habitat modification on fish behavior, which could have key implications on fish dynamics.
Highlights
Since the 1980’s, artificial reefs (AR) have been increasingly used as management tools, mainly to offset marine resource declines and enhance fish production [1,2,3]
The correlation test between raw fish detections and control tag detections for the AR and the NR showed that there was no correlation between hourly bin detections for the AR (R2 = 20.9, p-value = 0.6698; Fig. 3)
These results confirmed those from the temporal analysis of control tags: detection probabilities on the NR are influenced by environmental factors
Summary
Since the 1980’s, artificial reefs (AR) have been increasingly used as management tools, mainly to offset marine resource declines and enhance fish production [1,2,3]. More widely used management tools, such as fishing quotas [4] and marine protected areas [5,6], the deployment of ARs induces a physical alteration of bottom substrate, generally with the replacement of the naturally present soft bottom by concrete structures [7]. In contrast to habitat loss or degradation, these newly created habitats diminish inter-patch distances [9] generating artificial seascapes These newly added hard-bottom habitats alter seascapes both by their habitat structure (i.e. habitat complexity, heterogeneity and nature) [10], and by their habitat edges [11]. ARs immersed on these sandy gaps will probably change habitat utilization and spatio-temporal fish population dynamics
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