Turning Data Poor into Ecosystem Rich: A Metacommunity Approach to Test Spatial Harvest Strategies for “Data-Poor” Hawaiian Coral Reef Fisheries

One of the primary challenges to investigate the fishery dynamics of reef ecosystems is adequately representing the complex interactions of physical drivers, biological components, and anthropogenic activities across a heterogeneous marine seascape. To explore the dynamics of these complex systems, we utilize a metacommunity dynamics modeling system (CORSET) to evaluate how different environmental scenarios and fishery harvest may affect food web and community structures on Hawaiian reefs. The model structure relies on an explicit geographic domain of coral reef habitats that are linked through larval connectivity pathways modeled from oceanographic circulation models. Here we will describe methodologies and preliminary results that aim to illustrate how spatially varying fishing effort may affect the community composition and other ecological characteristics of coral reefs against community-based reference points. We also present on the linkage between the model’s habitat data and an updated consideration for a more ecologically-relevant application of fish habitat that may be  truly “essential” in the context of source-sink dynamics. We suggest that a geographically explicit model system and improved identification of critical habitats for coral reef fish stocks on a detailed and precise scale is critical for the development of sustainable fishery management strategies for these data poor stocks.