Título

Do marine reserves increase prey for California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals?

Autor

ALEJANDRO ARIAS DEL RAZO

Colaborador

Yolanda Schramm Urrutia (Colaborador)

GISELA HECKEL DZIENDZIELEWSKI (Colaborador)

MARIA ANDREA SAENZ-ARROYO DE LOS COBOS (Colaborador)

Arturo Hernández-Velasco (Colaborador)

Leonardo Vazquez-Vera (Colaborador)

Aldo Isaac Carrillo-Muñoz (Colaborador)

Nivel de Acceso

Acceso Abierto

Identificador alterno

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218651

Resumen o descripción

Community marine reserves are geographical areas closed to fishing activities, implemented and enforced by the same fishermen that fish around them. Their main objective is to recover commercial stocks of fish and invertebrates. While marine reserves have proven successful in many parts of the world, their success near important marine predator colonies, such as the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) and the Pacific harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardii), is yet to be analyzed. In response to the concerns expressed by local fishermen about the impact of the presence of pinnipeds on their communities’ marine reserves, we conducted underwater surveys around four islands in the Pacific west of the Baja California Peninsula: two without reserves (Todos Santos and San Roque); one with a recently established reserve (San Jeronimo); and, a fourth with reserves established eight years ago (Natividad). All these islands are subject to similar rates of exploitation by fishing cooperatives with exclusive rights. We estimated fish biomass and biodiversity in the seas around the islands, applying filters for potential California sea lion and harbor seal prey using known species from the literature. Generalized linear mixed models revealed that the age of the reserve has a significant positive effect on fish biomass, while the site (inside or outside of the reserve) did not, with a similar result found for the biomass of the prey of the California sea lion. Fish biodiversity was also higher around Natividad Island, while invertebrate biodiversity was higher around San Roque. These findings indicate that marine reserves increase overall fish diversity and biomass, despite the presence of top predators, even increasing the numbers of their potential prey. Community marine reserves may help to improve the resilience of marine mammals to climate-driven phenomena and maintain a healthy marine ecosystem for the benefit of both pinnipeds and fishermen. © 2019 Arias-Del-Razo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Editor

John A. B. Claydon, Institute of Marine Research, Norway

Fecha de publicación

2019

Tipo de publicación

Artículo

Versión de la publicación

Versión publicada

Formato

application/pdf

Fuente

PLoS ONE, Vol.14, No.6, Pags. 1-15

Idioma

Inglés

Sugerencia de citación

Arias-Del-Razo A, Schramm Y, Heckel G, Sáenz-Arroyo A, Hernández A, Vázquez L, et al. (2019) Do marine reserves increase prey for California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals? PLoS ONE 14(6): e0218651. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.021865

Repositorio Orígen

Repositorio Institucional CICESE

Descargas

17

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