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Why big fish thrive in protected oceans
Big fish are harder to find in areas sprawling with human activity, unless you’re looking in no-take marine reserves, according to a new study led by marine scientists at The University of Western Australia.
The study, published in Conservation Biology, is one of the largest of its kind and assessed the body size of fish from around Australia, using more than 22,000 baited remote underwater video (BRUV) devices and one million measurements along 10,000km of coastline.
PhD student Nestor Bosch, from UWA’s School of Biological Sciences, said BRUVs gave researchers the ability to see into areas where they couldn’t normally and enable the analysis of fish that would ordinarily be scared away by the presence of a diver.
Researchers from The University of Western Australia and 14 other institutions have undertaken the largest assessment of marine reserves in Australia,.