Abstract

Effective management of the spawning aggregations of exploited reef fish species calls for appropriate interventions, enforcement and monitoring to be successful and to evaluate outcomes. Many reef fishes are most effectively monitored using underwater visual census (UVC) methods, i.e. fishery independent methods, rather than relying on catches in the fishery (i.e. fishery-dependent methods). However, UVC conducted on spawning aggregations can be challenging and must be properly designed to provide meaningful measures of fish numbers over time (Colin et al. 2003). We provide an example of a consistently monitored multi-species grouper spawning aggregation in Palau, western Pacific, over a 5-year period that showed an interesting and unexpected pattern of apparent initiation of recovery

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