School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2017

Abstract

In 2011 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Coastal Conservation Association of Texas deployed over 4,000 concrete culverts in a designated artificial reef area off Port Mansfield, Texas, to enhance habitat for sport fish species in the Gulf of Mexico. A study was conducted to assess juvenile fish recruitment at varying culvert densities within the artificial reef area. Standard monitoring units for the recruitment of reef fish (SMURFs) were used to sample juvenile fish, and these collections were compared with visual scuba surveys. The 0.027-m3 SMURFs were placed at four different culvert densities (0, 1–50, 51–100, and 101+ culverts in a 30-m radius) and sampled during 2013 to 2014. Measurements of rugosity, vertical relief, and percent cover were collected to elucidate factors that drive juvenile recruitment. Average species richness was highest at sites with no culverts and lowest at dense culvert sites. Species compositions were significantly different between sampling locations with no culverts and all locations with culverts; average similarity was 33.8%. Belted Sandfish Serranus subligarius was the most ubiquitous species among all sampling locations. Visual scuba surveys at the same locations showed lower diversity indices of the juvenile fish community than observed by SMURFs and were only 14% similar to the community sampled by the SMURFs. These findings suggest SMURFs are a more effective tool for examining juvenile fish at an artificial reef due to the cryptic nature of juveniles and the low visibility around shallow reefs. Additionally, commercially important Yellowedge Grouper Hyporthodus flavolimbatus, Warsaw Grouper H. nigritus, and Red Snapper Lutjanus campechanus juveniles were only found at SMURFs at sampling locations with no culverts. The presence of juveniles of these key species suggest that fisheries management may benefit from creating low-relief reef patches away from the main reef where juvenile fish can recruit and grow.

Comments

Published with license by the American Fisheries Society © Rachel N. Arney, Catheline Y. M. Froehlich, and Richard J. Kline

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science

DOI

10.1080/19425120.2016.1265031

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.