ABSTRACT
Arti‚cial reefs were deployed in March 1996 on a ¦at bottom, 9 m deep and 5 km area offshore Southeast Brazil, and temporal changes of the associated ‚sh assemblages were assessed over a period of 10 years. Fishes were collected through bottom gillnets at 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 6 years, 7 years, and 10 years after arti‚cial reef deployment. A total of 961 ‚shes belonging to 41 species and 18 families were caught, with C. chrysurus (Carangidae) and C. nobilis (Haemulidae) as the dominant species and Sciaenidae as the richest family (N = 11 species). No single species occurred throughout the surveys and ‚sh species composition differed temporally among <1 year, 1-6 year, and 7-10 year time intervals. Fish richness, abundance, biomass, and size varied signi‚- cantly with time; richness increased gradually toward a stabilization in the last years. Abundance and biomass decreased after the sixth year, and size decreased linearly through time. No temporal trend of ‚sh abundance and biomass was found for piscivorous species; however, these variables increased until the sixth and seventh years for planktivorous and invertivorous ‚shes. Abundance and biomass of the most frequent ‚sh families changed differentially with time, with a gradual decreasing after the ‚rst year for Carcharhinidae and Triakidae, a unimodal response for Carangidae and
CONTENTS
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 125 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 126 Materials and Methods .................................................................................................................. 126
Study Site .................................................................................................................................. 126 Experimental Design ................................................................................................................. 127 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 128
Results ............................................................................................................................................ 128 Discussion ...................................................................................................................................... 133
Fish Assemblage Structure and Reef Age ................................................................................. 133 Implications on Local Fisheries ................................................................................................ 135 Suggestions for Assessing Arti‚cial Reefs in Fishery Management ........................................ 137
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... 138 References ...................................................................................................................................... 138
Haemulidae, and a steady increment for Sciaenidae and Ariidae. This study reveals the importance of long-term studies of ‚sh assemblages associated with arti‚cial reefs to conduct management actions to effectively improve the captures by local inshore ‚shermen and minimize the risks of detrimental effects, as ‚shery failure or over‚shing.
