CANBERRA, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Protecting predatory fish on Australia's Great Barrier Reef has helped to prevent more frequent outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS), new research revealed Monday.
The study provides new modelling-based evidence that zoning and fisheries management strategies adopted in 2004 are likely to have played an important role in recovering fish populations, reducing CoTS outbreaks and mitigating coral loss, said a media release of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency.
The research, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, was conducted by CSIRO and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).
CoTS are one of the biggest threats to coral on the Great Barrier Reef, with multiple outbreaks of CoTS occurring over the past four decades, said Scott Condie, CSIRO researcher and lead author of the study.
"Particular fish, like emperors, eat crown-of-thorns starfish," Condie said, adding that protective measures, such as increasing no-take zones to 33 percent, and tighter fishing regulations, were put in place in 2004 to protect these predatory fish.
The model shows that these initiatives likely "averted a catastrophic tipping point" that would have left the Great Barrier Reef with fewer large fish, resulting in continuous CoTS outbreaks and substantially less coral, he said.
Long-term monitoring shows that the frequency of outbreaks across the Great Barrier Reef is consistently lower in protected zones, while models forecast a four-fold rise in affected reefs by 2050 without these fish protection strategies, according to the research.
"Without intervention over the last two decades, the model shows that grouper and emperor populations on the Great Barrier Reef would also have consistently declined under increasing fishing pressure," said AIMS researcher Daniela Ceccarelli.
"This modelling is an important step towards understanding the potential for CoTS management to protect the Great Barrier Reef under the increasing threat of climate change," Ceccarelli added. ■
