[OANNES Foro] Archaeological Evidence of Validity of Fish Populations on Unexploited Reefs as Proxy Targets for Modern Populations

[Mario Cabrejos]

Conservation Biology

Article first published online: 25 MAR 2014

DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12287


Archaeological Evidence of Validity of Fish Populations on Unexploited Reefs
as Proxy Targets for Modern Populations


KEN LONGENECKER1, YVONNE L. CHAN2, ROBERT J. TOONEN2, DAVID B. CARLON3,
TERRY L. HUNT4, ALAN M. FRIEDLANDER5 and EDWARD E. DEMARTINI6

1 Department of Natural Sciences, Bishop Museum, Honolulu, HI, U.S.A.2
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Kaneohe, U.S.A.3 Biology Department,
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, U.S.A.4 Clark Honors College and Department of
Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, U.S.A.5 Department of Biology,
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, U.S.A.6 National Marine Fisheries
Service, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Hawaii Research Center,
Aiea, U.S.A. Email: KEN LONGENECKER (klongenecker en bishopmuseum.org)


Funded by


*	NSF Hawaii EPSCoR 
*	NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. Grant Number: NA09NMF4630123 
*	Office of National Marine Sanctuaries NWHICRER-HIMB partnership.
Grant Number: MOA-2005-008/6882

Abstract

 

Reef-fish management and conservation is hindered by a lack of information
on fish populations prior to large-scale contemporary human impacts. As a
result, relatively pristine sites are often used as conservation baselines
for populations near sites affected by humans. This space-for-time approach
can only be validated by sampling assemblages through time. We used
archaeological remains to evaluate whether the remote, uninhabited
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) might provide a reasonable proxy for a
lightly exploited baseline in the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI). We used
molecular and morphological techniques to describe the taxonomic and size
composition of the scarine parrotfish catches present in 2 archaeological
assemblages from the MHI, compared metrics of these catches with modern
estimates of reproductive parameters to evaluate whether catches represented
by the archaeological material were consistent with sustainable fishing, and
evaluated overlap between size structures represented by the archaeological
material and modern survey data from the MHI and the NWHI to assess whether
a space-for-time substitution is reasonable. The parrotfish catches
represented by archaeological remains were consistent with sustainable
fishing because they were dominated by large, mature individuals whose
average size remained stable from prehistoric (AD approximately 1400-1700)
through historic (AD 1700-1960) periods. The ancient catches were unlike
populations in the MHI today. Overlap between the size structure of ancient
MHI catches and modern survey data from the NWHI or the MHI was an order of
magnitude greater for the NWHI comparison, a result that supports the
validity of using the NWHI parrotfish data as a proxy for the MHI before
accelerated, heavy human impacts in modern times.

 



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