Page 1 of 37 Privileged Communication 1 1 Precautionary catch limits on forage fish would rarely 2 advance marine predator conservation 3 Christopher M. Free1,2*, Olaf P. Jensen2, Ray Hilborn3 4 5 1 Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa 6 Barbara, CA;
[email protected] 7 2 Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA; 8
[email protected] 9 3 School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 10
[email protected] 11 12 * Corresponding author: BrenFor School Peer of Environmental Review Science and Management, University of 13 California, Santa Barbara, 2400 Bren Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA;
[email protected]; +1 (610) 14 999-4732 15 Abstract 16 Forage fish — small, low-trophic level fish such as herrings, sardines, and anchovies — are 17 critical prey species in marine ecosystems and also support large commercial fisheries. There 18 are increasing calls for precautionary catch limits on forage fish to protect valuable fish 19 predators and protected seabirds and marine mammals. However, the effectiveness of these 20 regulations, which assume that increasing prey abundance increases predator productivity, are 21 under debate. We used prey-linked population models to measure the influence of forage fish 22 abundance on the productivity of 45 marine predator populations of 32 species from five 23 regions. Our results indicate that predator productivity is rarely influenced by the abundance of 24 their prey. Only six predator populations were positively influenced by prey abundance; more 25 populations were negatively influenced.