Good news from the Cayman Islands

Abstract

Conservation Groupers are large tropical marine fish that show remarkable mass-spawning behaviors. Predictably, regular aggregations of large fish make easy targets for exploitation by fishermen. As a result, an important food species, the Nassau grouper ( Epinephelus striatus ), has become critically endangered throughout the Caribbean. Waterhouse et al. show how coordinated management action over 15 years among government personnel, academics, and nonprofit organizations has been effective in replenishing the species on Little Cayman in the Cayman Islands. Spatial and seasonal fishing closures were implemented, supported by a stock monitoring program. A combination of modeling and diver-based census shows that the population of this species has tripled locally. Similar programs could be adopted elsewhere in tropical fisheries where mass-spawning species are vulnerable to overexploitation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 10.1073/pnas.1917132117 (2020).