Comparison of Artificial and Natural Reef Productivity in Nantucket Sound, MA, USA
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Comparison of Artificial and Natural Reef Productivity in Nantucket Sound, MA, USA Simonetta Harrison 1
&
Mark Rousseau 2
Received: 28 November 2019 / Revised: 23 March 2020 / Accepted: 23 April 2020 # Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation 2020
Abstract Artificial reef communities undergo long periods of succession prior to becoming stable, but funding challenges often prevent post-deployment monitoring from evaluating long-term successional changes. The present study employed baited remote underwater video surveillance (BRUVS) to compare the species richness, diversity, abundance, and age structure of fishes across a 4-year-old artificial reef, a 41-year-old artificial reef, a representative natural reef, and a bare control in Nantucket Sound, MA, USA, to address whether the perceived success of an artificial reef can be determined 5 years after deployment. Results indicated that, while species richness and diversity were largely uniform throughout the Sound, fish appeared on camera 93.4% faster at artificial reef sites than they did at the bare sand control. Reef-associated fish were 103.7% more abundant on the older artificial reef than on the younger artificial reef. Therefore, although the younger artificial reef is in its fifth year of monitoring, abundances of economically important fishes on the reef may continue to increase in future years and current numbers may not accurately reflect reef success or failure. Future management plans should consider extending monitoring programs longer than 5 years and implementing temporal fishing closures on newly deployed reefs to facilitate earlier post-deployment community stabilization. Keywords Artificial reef . Attraction . BRUV . Fisheries management . Nantucket Sound . Production
Introduction Reef fishes are a crucial component of the biodiversity of coastal systems and provide a large source of biomass for both recreational and commercial fisheries on a global scale (Malcolm et al. 2007; Harasti et al. 2015). Excessive extractive pressures on reef fishes have driven many countries to deploy artificial reefs within their territorial waters to promote fisheries protection and enhancement (Hunter and Sayer 2009; Folpp et al. 2013). Artificial reefs may be defined as approved structures that have intentionally been placed or constructed for the purpose of enhancing benthic relief (Rousseau 2008). Deployment of such reefs has substantially increased in recent Communicated by Henrique Cabral * Simonetta Harrison [email protected] Mark Rousseau [email protected] 1
Northeastern University, 430 Nahant Rd, Nahant, MA 01908, USA
2
Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, 30 Emerson Ave, Gloucester, MA 01930, USA
decades, and they now form part of a broader strategy for marine ecosystem management in many countries (Baine 2001; Becker et al. 2017). While primarily focused on bolstering coastal fisheries, artificial reefs may provide compounding secondary benefits such as habitat and shoreline protection, sediment accretion, and mitigation for ha
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