Abstract
Fisheries and natural water resources across the world are under increasing pressure from human activity, including fishing and irrigated agriculture. There is an urgent need for information on the climatic/hydrologic drivers of fishery productivity that can be readily applied to management. We use a generalized linear mixed model framework of catch curve regression to resolve the key climatic/hydrological drivers of recruitment in Barramundi Lates calcarifer using biochronological (otolith aging) data collected from four river-estuary systems in the Northern Territory, Australia. These models were then used to generate estimates of the year class strength (YCS) outcomes of different water abstraction scenarios (ranging from 10% to 40% abstraction per season/annum) for two of the rivers in low, moderate, and high discharge years. Barramundi YCS displayed strong interannual variation and was positively correlated with regional monsoon activity in all four rivers. River-specific analyses identified strong relationships between YCS and several river-specific hydrology variables, including wet and dry season discharge and flow duration. Water abstraction scenario models based on YCS–hydrology relationships predicted reductions of >30% in YCS in several cases, suggesting that increased water resource development in the future may pose risks for Barramundi recruitment and fishery productivity. Our study demonstrates the importance of the tropical monsoon as a driver of Barramundi recruitment and the potential for detrimental impacts of increased water abstraction on fishery productivity. The biochronological and statistical approaches we used have the potential to be broadly applied to inform policy and management of water resource and fisheries.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2563 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-18 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Ecological Applications |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 9 Feb 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC), Project 2015/012, with support from Charles Darwin University (CDU), the NT DITT and the NT DEPWS. The authors gratefully acknowledge Nicole Stubing, Chris Izzo, Skye Barrett, and Leah Fergusson (FRDC), and members of the Northern Territory Research Advisory Committee for their ongoing support and interest in the project. We thank staff from NT DITT and DEPWS for collecting and preparing otoliths and for guidance with the development of the water abstraction scenarios, respectively. We gratefully acknowledge the large number of commercial and recreational fishers who contributed the samples used in our analyses, and acknowledge and pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters on which this research was conducted.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Ecological Society of America.
