Measuring Recovery of Benthic Species, Assessing Potential Spill-Over Effects and Socio-Economic Changes
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Lyme Bay - A case study: measuring recovery of benthic species, assessing potential spill-over effects and socio-economic changes Objective 4: Assessment the long-term effects of fishery area closures on long-lived and sessile species 17 December 2010 Defra Contract No: MB0101 Marine and Fisheries Science Unit, Nobel House, London Author details: O. Langmead MarLIN Biodiversity and Conservation Science Programme, Manager [email protected] E.L. Jackson MarLIN Biodiversity and Conservation Science Programme, Manager [email protected] D.T.I.Bayley MarLIN Biodiversity and Conservation Science Programme, Information Officer [email protected] C.E. Marshall [email protected] S.C. Gall University of Plymouth Marine Biology & Ecology Research Centre, Project Support Officer [email protected] The Marine Life Information Network® for Britain and Ireland (MarLIN) The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom The Laboratory Citadel Hill Plymouth, PL1 2PB www.marlin.ac.uk This report should be cited as: Langmead, O., Jackson, E.L., Bayley, D.T.I., Marshall, C.E., Gall, S.C., 2010. Assessment of the long-term effects of fishery area closures on long-lived and sessile species. Report to Defra from the Marine Life Information Network (MarLIN). Plymouth: Marine Biological Association of the UK. Defra contract No.MB0101 1 Disclaimer: The content of this report does not necessarily reflect the views of Defra, nor is Defra liable for the accuracy of information provided, or responsible for any use of the reports content. 2 Executive Summary The work presented in this report is part of a larger project funded by Defra which focuses on assessing the various changes that may ensue as a result of protection of a 60 nm2 area of Lyme Bay to mobile fishing gear, both in ecological and economic terms. The ecological monitoring includes monitoring of representative indicator species of the reef to examine recoverability and to “assess the long-term effects of fishery area closures on long lived and sessile benthic species”. The current report outlines the potential recoverability of fragile long-lived sessile species within the area through biological traits analysis and modelling, and also assesses the current level of current knowledge on long-term community recovery in temperate waters following marine area closures. Complex hard substratum habitats recover slower from the impacts of fishing than other sites (Kaiser et al., 2006). This is related to the life history of the organisms that live there. Most of the sessile benthic taxa from the reefs of Lyme Bay are either fragile or of intermediate fragility. Species that can regenerate from fragments are likely to recover faster than those with a solitary habit (sponges, bryozoans and corals), but only if they have not suffered local extirpation and are reliant on recolonisation via larval recruitment. Taxa that cannot regenerate are likely to take longer since they are reliant on external supply of larvae and subsequent recruitment processes, which can be very variable, and in addition many are slow growing. Complete recovery has rarely been established, in part due to a lack of reference areas, which has confounded many experimental approaches (Engel & Kvitek, 1998). Species interactions may mediate recovery and produce unexpected and dramatic responses and are hard to predict. Dramatic shifts have been documented in the literature from urchin barrens to macroalgal dominated communities, reversing trophic cascades e.g. (Salomon et al., 2008). These can occur over extended timescales. Nevertheless, analogous changes of a similarly dramatic nature are unlikely at Lyme Bay because there is no conspicuously dominant grazer equivalent to the urchins, nor is there any obviously grazer-dominated habitat. Secondly, this type of interaction is more likely to be seen in no-take reserves, where predators can recover, whereas the closure in Lyme Bay is closed only to demersal towed gears. From the modelling work it is clear that all three approaches predicted that a large proportion of the closed area is suitable for supporting the pink sea fan. In reality, many of these areas are associated with absence records (false positives). The Maxent model outperformed the other models in all but one of the model performance indicators and on face value one might use this model in preference to the GLM output to support spatial management measures. Overall this work identified a paucity of quantitative, comparable studies in the literature on which to predict recovery of sessile benthic communities. This highlights the importance of the monitoring work in Lyme Bay, not just to quantify patterns and rates of recovery of a priority UK habitat, and associated community that includes many species of conservation importance, but this has profound importance for adding to the global body of knowledge of reef systems and their recoverability from physical disturbance. 3 Contents Page Executive Summary ........................................................................................................... 3 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 7 1.1 Project Background ................................................................................................ 7 1.2 Assessing long-term effects of fishery closure ........................................................ 8 1.3 Aims and specific objectives ................................................................................... 9 2 Methods ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Biological traits analysis of sensitivity and recoverability traits of long-lived sessile species ........................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 Construction of a species list for Lyme Bay.................................................... 10 2.1.2 Biological traits analysis ................................................................................. 11 2.2 Review of long-term effects of fishery area closures on long-lived sessile benthic organisms ....................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.1 Construction of the database ......................................................................... 14 2.2.2 Literature search criteria ................................................................................ 14 2.2.3 Data collation and analyses ........................................................................... 15 2.3 Predictive modelling of Eunicella verrucosa distribution in Lyme Bay ................... 17 2.3.1 Distribution data ............................................................................................. 17 2.3.2 Environmental data ........................................................................................ 17 2.3.3 Modelling approach ........................................................................................ 18 2.3.4 Model performance ........................................................................................ 19 2.3.5 Model outputs ................................................................................................. 21 2.3.6 Fishing activity data ........................................................................................ 21 3 Results and discussion ............................................................................................ 22 3.1 Analysis of sensitivity and recoverability traits of long-lived sessile species ......... 22 3.1.1 Fragile taxa .................................................................................................... 26 3.1.2 Intermediate fragility taxa ............................................................................... 28 3.1.3 Robust taxa .................................................................................................... 30 3.2 Long-tem effects of fishery area closures on long-lived sessile organisms .......... 31 3.3 Eunicella verrucosa distribution modelling in Lyme Bay ....................................... 40 3.3.1 Environmental parameters ............................................................................. 40 3.3.2 Model performance ........................................................................................ 40 3.3.3 Historic fishing activity and long term monitoring ........................................... 45 3.3.4 Environmental parameters ............................................................................. 48 3.3.5 Model performance ........................................................................................ 48 4 Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 50 5 References ................................................................................................................ 52 6 Appendices ............................................................................................................... 55 6.1 Appendix 1: Lyme Bay benthic species list ........................................................... 55 4 List of Figures Figure 1 Construction of the list of benthic species for Lyme Bay Figure 2 Flow diagram of the steps used to filter Lyme Bay long-lived sessile taxa using life history trait analysis