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Is a Fishing Moratorium Needed in Lake Honghu, Southern China? A Stomach Content Analysis of the Short-Jawed Tapertail Anchovy Coilia brachygnathus (Clupeiformes: Engraulidae)
Melaku, A.Y.; Cao, L.; Shen, J.-Z.; Zhang, E. Is a Fishing Moratorium Needed in Lake Honghu, Southern China? A Stomach Content Analysis of the Anchovy (Coilia brachygnathus). Fishes2023, 8, 501.
Melaku, A.Y.; Cao, L.; Shen, J.-Z.; Zhang, E. Is a Fishing Moratorium Needed in Lake Honghu, Southern China? A Stomach Content Analysis of the Anchovy (Coilia brachygnathus). Fishes 2023, 8, 501.
Melaku, A.Y.; Cao, L.; Shen, J.-Z.; Zhang, E. Is a Fishing Moratorium Needed in Lake Honghu, Southern China? A Stomach Content Analysis of the Anchovy (Coilia brachygnathus). Fishes2023, 8, 501.
Melaku, A.Y.; Cao, L.; Shen, J.-Z.; Zhang, E. Is a Fishing Moratorium Needed in Lake Honghu, Southern China? A Stomach Content Analysis of the Anchovy (Coilia brachygnathus). Fishes 2023, 8, 501.
Abstract
Since 2017, a fishing moratorium has been enforced in Lake Honghu as part of Chang-Jiang’s biodiversity conservation strategy. However, given that the lake is a semi-closed aquatic ecosystem, and no longer serves as a habitat for certain fishes of the mid-lower Chang-Jiang basin, the efficacy of this moratorium remains uncertain. To address the question from a trophic ecology perspective, a stomach content analysis was performed on captured anchovies C. brachygnathus, a current predominant species in Lake Honghu, from November 2020 to October 2021. Results showed that copepods, shrimps, and macrophytes were the main components of this anchovy's diet, and had size-related shifts in diets. The dominance of C. brachygnathus, a pelagic-littoral omnivore in this lake, implies a lacustrine environment shift triggered by continued human disturbances. The utilization of macrophytes as the main food items by large-sized anchovies of Lake Honghu partially contributed to the rapid degradation of submerged vegetation. This highlights the need to remove large-sized individuals of C. brachygnathus and Carassius auratus, another benthic-omnivorous dominant fish, in order to effectively restore the aquatic vegetation and ecosystem of Lake Honghu. The current implementation of fishing moratoriums in subtropical shallow floodplain lakes such as Lake Honghu should be reviewed critically.
Keywords
Anchovy; omnivore; plant-origin food; fisheries management; fish ban
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Aquatic Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
