Fish Spawning Aggregations: A Reef Resilience Toolkit Module

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Collecting data about the fish catch can provide helpful information about local spawning aggregations. Photo © K. Warren-Rhodes

Define Your Focus

The first step in any conservation program is to answer a few questions about the relative level of threat, and the need for conservation of the spawning aggregation:

Which FSA-forming reef-associated species are present in the area and, of those, which are important to local communities or regional fisheries?
Is there any evidence to suggest that spawning aggregations for these species are being over-utilized by fisheries, or endangered by other processes (e.g., habitat destruction), and do they need immediate or near-term protection?
When do spawning aggregations form?
Where are the spawning aggregation sites?
Which species are present and which spawn in the aggregation sites that have been identified?
What are the likely impacts to the spawning aggregation, the fishes utilizing them, and the fishing community from conservation measures?

SCRFA

The Society for the Conservation of Reef Fish Aggregations (SCRFA) is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 2000, to raise awareness about the vulnerability of reef fish spawning aggregations, and to provide new avenues for communication about how best to conserve them. SCRFA has a 7-member board of directors, with decades of combined spawning aggregation research experience, and approximately 300 members who receive regular news and information about current events surrounding spawning aggregations worldwide.

Their website contains useful background information on spawning aggregations, as well as information on the study, management and conservation of FSAs. SCRFA maintains a database on global trends and recent findings, an up-to-date list of publications that can be linked and downloaded, and links to other websites or organizations dedicated to spawning aggregations. SCRFA publishes a regular newsletter that is free to members. SCRFA welcomes new members free of charge; contact them via their website.

Answering these basic questions can assist in developing an information gathering and conservation strategy, and may reduce the amount of time and effort needed to identify and conserve local FSAs. While attention should initially be given to species or FSAs that may be in danger of extirpation, it is important to provide all FSAs with equal protection, since closing one FSA may simply shift effort to another ‘less important, less utilized’ FSA.

Bear in mind that while more abundant sites may be more visually appealing, smaller, less abundant sites may be in greater danger of overfishing and loss, and need more immediate conservation attention. Species that are often the focus of regional conservation attention, e.g., snappers and groupers, may have little importance to local fisheries in your area, and may deserve less immediate attention than other locally important FSA-forming species. Identifying the species likely requiring the most immediate conservation action should be the first focus of any information gathering exercise. For more discussion on this topic refer to the section on Protection Priorities.

When gathering information on spawning aggregations, it is often advisable to use a variety of different sources. The best start is the variety of published (peer-reviewed) and grey (unpublished) literature on spawning aggregations, and the many web-based resources and publications currently available, or listed, such as on the SCRFA website.