Demographics and recovery potential of exploited marine teleosts.

ABSTRACT: Equilibrium concepts and the expectation of compensatory density dependence remain fundamental to fisheries science, but stock collapses and an increasing appreciation of environmental factors have raised questions about their real-world applicability. To explore the demographic variability of harvested marine fishes, we have calculated metrics commonly used in conservation biology to describe the demographics for 77 assessed stocks from the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific Oceans using life-tables. We found that median annual population growth rates ([Formula: see text]) were centered around 1, and surprisingly, they were only slightly higher when the effect of fishing was excluded. For most stocks, as abundance declined, [Formula: see text] tended to increase and become more variable

SUBMITTER: Keith DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12799014 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature