Dynamite Fishing Essay

Similarly, another way fishing effects biodiversity and marine ecosystem function is being effected in-directly through possible fishing of species holding ecosystem engineer traits. So through increasing fishing pressures and the loss of particular fish species through disturbance, or bycatch that could be a possible ecosystem engineers, loss of such species can cause serious disturbance and influence both biodiversity and ecosystem function at a much faster rate (Coleman and Williams, 2002). Little research has been published on examples of marine vertebrate as ecosystem engineers, in spite there being many species that burrow or species that re-structure their habitats. An example of species that have had more in-depth research are the tilefish

Dynamite fishing or blast fishing is known to have direct effects on marine biodiversity especially impacting the coral reef systems where this technique is frequently used. There are other methods destructive like blast or dynamite fishing such as cyanide fishing, both are used widely throughout the Indo-West Pacific Ocean mostly with countries found in SE Asia (Erdmann et al, 2000). These types of destructive fishing can be high risk to marine biodiversity; these techniques threaten too rigorously damage large percentages coral reefs. Additionally loss of coral cover, which reduces both fish abundance and diversity overtime and leading to possible effects at a larger ecosystem function level unless the coral regrowth is sufficient to compensate the loss (Saila, 1993). There are two main types of threats of fishing particularly to fragile systems such as coral reefs, but can additionally be affecting other marine systems. These are acute treats and chronic stress, acute threat is intense damage in a short period e.g. destructive fish practices, such as blast/cyanide fishing and including further forms of mechanical damage, like ship grounding, anchor damage. Acute threats cause substantial damage nevertheless; they species do persist and can generally recover if protected from further exploitation (Saila

If fish species being affected has competitors which can replace the species being exploited or they are a species which can reproduce fast enough to recover, then even though biodiversity levels may fluctuate the overall ecosystem function may not be effected. Species possessing ecosystem engineer traits or k-selected life traits should show higher response to fishing exploitation. Loss of ecosystem engineers and loss of top-down predators will result in decrease of overall biodiversity and ecosystem functions in the marine environment at a more observable level. However there is still growing concern over the status of impacts on fishing on the variety of marine ecosystems and it still needs to be defined and tested, to inform future fisheries management decisions. There is a considerable debate in the on-going world of marine research of how to define, calculate, test and evaluate indicators that can monitor fishing pressure and status of exploited marine ecosystems (Coll et al, 2016). Finding out if fishing is a major pressure on many marine ecosystems, even in exploited environments is hard to determine due to the other drivers including natural environmental stressors or other anthropogenic stressors (pollution, eutrophication etc.). These potential stressors can