Alan Friedlander

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | UH Manoa · Institute of Marine Biology

Ancient Hawaiians developed a sophisticated natural resource management system that included various forms of spatial management. Today there exists in Hawai'i a variety of spatial marine management strategies along a range of scales, with varying degrees of effectiveness. State-managed no-take areas make up less than 0.4% of nearshore waters, resu...

Abstract 1. Large declines in reef fish populations in Hawai’i have raised concerns about the sustainability of these resources, and the ecosystem as a whole. To help elucidate the reasons behind these declines, a comprehensive examination of reef fish assemblages was conducted across the entire 2500 km Hawaiian Archipelago. 2. Twenty-five datasets...

Ancient Hawaiians developed sophisticated natural resource management systems that included various forms of spatial management. The state of Hawaiʻi established its first legislated marine protected area (MPA) in 1953, and today there exists a patchwork of spatial marine management strategies along a range of sizes, with varying levels of governan...

Scientific advances in environmental data coverage and machine learning algorithms have improved the ability to make large‐scale predictions where data are missing. These advances allowed us to develop a spatially resolved proxy for predicting numbers of tropical nearshore marine taxa. A diverse marine environmental spatial database was used to mod...

Predicting and mapping coral reef diversity at moderate scales can assist spatial planning and prioritizing conservation activities. We made coarse-scale (6.25 km ² ) predictive models for numbers of coral reef fish species and community composition starting with a spatially complete database of 70 environmental variables available for 7039 mapped...

Animal body-size variation influences multiple processes in marine ecosystems, but habitat heterogeneity has prevented a comprehensive assessment of size across pelagic (midwater) and benthic (seabed) systems along anthropic gradients. In this work, we derive fish size indicators from 17,411 stereo baited-video deployments to test for differences b...

Niue represents one of many important steppingstones facilitating the dispersal of marine organisms across the tropical Pacific Ocean. This study is part of a collaborative expedition involving National Geographic Pristine Seas, the government of Niue, Oceans 5, and the Pacific Community. We present the first survey documenting the species richness...

Marine fjords along the northern Labrador coast of Arctic Canada are influenced by freshwater, nutrients, and sediment inputs from ice fields and rivers. These ecosystems, further shaped by both Atlantic and Arctic water masses, are important habitats for fishes, marine mammals, seabirds, and marine invertebrates and are vital to the Labrador Inuit...

Sustainably managing fisheries requires regular and reliable evaluation of stock status. However, most multispecies reef fisheries around the globe tend to lack research and monitoring capacity, preventing the estimation of sustainable reference points against which stocks can be assessed. Here, combining fish biomass data for >2000 coral reefs, we...

The Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges are two adjacent seamount chains of volcanic origin located in thesoutheastern Pacific, which collectively stretch across over 2,900 km of seafloor. Ecosystems in thisregion are isolated from the South American Continent by the Atacama Trench and the Humboldt CurrentSystem. This isolation has produced a unique bio...

Although seagrass meadows form a relatively homogenous habitat, escarpments, which form three‐dimensional structures and originate from the erosion of seagrass peat, can provide important habitat for reef fishes. Here, we compare fish assemblages and habitat structural complexity among seagrass Posidonia australis escarpments and canopies, as well...

Humans alter ecosystems through both consumptive and non-consumptive effects. Consumptive effects occur through hunting, fishing and collecting, while non-consumptive effects occur due to the responses of wildlife to human presence. While marine conservation efforts have focused on reducing consumptive effects, managing human presence is also neces...

As a final act, families of the deceased strive to implement funeral rites that are befitting of their loved one. However, perceived obligatory adherence to an immutable culture, plus emulation, can compel families to carry out a costly funeral. Yet, no data exist on financing and expenditure of indigenous Fijian (iTaukei) funerals in Fiji, which c...

Human exploitation has profoundly depleted animal populations in the ocean, leading to declines in ecosystem productivity, resilience, and contributions to people 1,2 . However, it remains unclear how size structure of fish populations varies across marine habitat and levels of human exploitation while simultaneously underpinning food web architect...

Bumphead parrotfish ( Bolbometopon muricatum ) and Napoleon wrasse ( Cheilinus undulatus ) are large, charismatic species with high economic and cultural value in Palau and are important for ecosystem function. As a result of intense fishing pressure, landings in Palau for both species declined dramatically in the 1990s and, in response, national l...

The kelp forests of southern Patagonia have a large diversity of habitats, with remote islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, gulfs, channels, and fjords, which are comprised of a mixture of species with temperate and sub-Antarctic distributions, creating a unique ecosystem that is among the least impacted on Earth. We investigated the distribution, di...

Islands support unique plants, animals, and human societies found nowhere else on the Earth. Local and global stressors threaten the persistence of island ecosystems, with invasive species being among the most damaging, yet solvable, stressors. While the threat of invasive terrestrial mammals on island flora and fauna is well recognized, recent stu...

Connectivity is essential to consider in area-based marine conservation measures because it greatly impacts vital ecological processes (e.g., recycling nutrients, regulating temperature, sequestering carbon, and supporting the life cycle of species). However, it is generally not well studied or integrated into conservation measures, particularly in...

Sustainably managing fisheries requires regular and reliable evaluation of stock status. However, most multispecies reef fisheries around the globe tend to be data-poor and lack research and monitoring capacity (e.g., long-term fishery data), preventing the estimation of sustainable reference points against which stocks can be assessed. Here, combi...

Osa Peninsula in remote southwest Costa Rica harbors 2.5% of global terrestrial biodiversity in only 1,200 km ² and has the largest remaining tract of Pacific lowland wet forest in Mesoamerica. However, little is known about the marine ecosystems of this diverse region. Much of the coastline consists of soft sediment exposed to strong wave action....

Isolated coral reef habitats are unique systems to study the natural dynamics of coral traits and their natural acclimatization, adaptation, and recovery from global-scale stressors such as thermally induced bleaching events. This study evaluates the spatial and temporal changes in coral community attributes (diversity, live cover, and coral assemb...

Aim: Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances (i.e., β-diversity) is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional variation in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distance...

Human impact increasingly alters global ecosystems, often reducing biodiversity and disrupting the provision of essential ecosystem services to humanity. Therefore, preserving ecosystem functioning is a critical challenge of the twenty-first century. Coral reefs are declining worldwide due to the pervasive effects of climate change and intensive fi...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a key tool for achieving goals for biodiversity conservation and human well-being, including improving climate resilience and equitable access to nature. At a national level, they are central components in the U.S. commitment to conserve at least 30% of U.S. waters by 2030. By definition, the primary goal of an MPA...

Spearfishing, a common activity among Pacific Islanders, has been described to strongly modify the behaviour of target fish species. Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a remote Chilean oceanic island, has suffered a serious decline in its nearshore fish stocks through overfishing. In this study, the flight initiation distance (FID) of the Pacific rudderfish...

We used satellite tags to monitor the movements of yellowfin tuna, blue marlin, and sailfish in the Palau National Marine Sanctuary (PNMS) and provide a first look into their use of this large-scale marine protected area (LSMPA). Tagged fish ranged over a wide geographic area between 1°S to 17°N and 125 to 154°W. Both blue marlin and sailfish exhib...

Marine protected area (MPA) designs, including large-scale MPAs (LSMPAs; >150,000 km2), mobile MPAs (fluid spatiotemporal boundaries), and MPA networks, may offer different benefits to species and could enhance protection by encompassing spatiotemporal scales of animal movement. We sought to understand how well LSMPAs could benefit nine highly-mobi...

We report new records of the fisheries‐harvested subtropical greater amberjack Seriola dumerili for the south‐east Pacific Ocean. Despite local fishers' asserting that three Seriola morphotypes exist in the region, only one species (the yellowtail amberjack Seriola lalandi) was previously scientifically recorded for Rapa Nui (also known as Easter I...

Species overexploitation has simplified food webs worldwide, resulting in the degradation of ecosystems relative to their natural state. Fishes are the most important herbivores in many shallow coral reef environments, where they control algal successional processes and promote coral reef resilience. Nowadays, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is suffering...

We report the first survey of shallow-water foraminifera from the Selvagens Islands, an isolated archipelago located in the subtropical Northeast Atlantic. In our samples, we identified 62 species of foraminifera belonging to 43 genera in the >63 μm fraction, including eight species of symbiont-bearing Larger Benthic Foraminifera (LBFs). The assemb...

Current best‐practice policy recommendations for managing fish stocks are achieved by a mixture of maintaining modest fishing mortality (restricting effort, times and gear), marine reserve networks and not subsidizing unprofitable fisheries. A seldom evaluated question is how effective these proposed approaches are for maintaining all fish stocks a...

Knowledge of the ecology of the fish fauna associated with kelp (primarily Macrocystis pyrifera ) forests in Southern Patagonia is scarce, especially in how abiotic and biotic variables influence their structure, diversity, and distribution. This information is important for the management and conservation of this unique ecosystem, which has minima...

Consistency in conservation Marine protected areas (MPAs) are now well established globally as tools for conservation, for enhancing marine biodiversity, and for promoting sustainable fisheries. That said, which regions are labeled as MPAs varies substantially, from those that full protect marine species and prohibit human extraction to those that...

Palau has a rich tradition of fisheries management and stewardship of its waters, and as in many island nations, small-scale coral reef fisheries are a vital part of the local culture, economy, and food security. However, reef fisheries in Palau are data-poor and there is increasing concern that reef fish stocks are declining. To evaluate the curre...

The Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region comprises almost 6% (about 15,180 km2) of the total global area of coral reefs, and the region is a globally important hotspot for coral reef biodiversity. The WIO includes sovereign states along the eastern and southern African mainland (Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa), island states (Mauri...

Aim Marine habitats and their dynamics are difficult to systematically monitor, particularly those in remote locations. This is the case with the sub-Antarctic ecosystem of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera, which was already noted by Charles Darwin in his accounts on the Voyage of the Beagle and recorded on the nautical charts made during that e...

Abstract Subtidal observations along the Cape Horn Archipelago, Chile (CHA) in February 2017 revealed an unusually large aggregation (or pod) of juvenile false king crabs, Paralomis granulosa (Hombron and Jacquinot, 1846), in association with kelp forests (Macrocystis pyrifera and Lessonia spp.). This is the first study to report a dense aggregatio...

The Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges are underwater mountain chains that stretch across 2,900 km in the southeastern Pacific and are recognized for their high biodiversity value and unique ecological characteristics. Explorations of deep-water ecosystems have been limited in this region, and elsewhere globally. To characterize community composition o...

Bathymetric features such as islands and seamounts, as well as dynamic ocean features such as fronts often harbour rich marine communities. We deployed mid-water baited remote underwater video systems on three expeditions in Ascension Island’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), surveying the waters associated with six different bathymetric and dynamic...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03496-1.

The newly created Kawésqar National Park (KNP) and National Reserve (KNR) in southern Chile consists of diverse terrestrial and marine habitats, which includes the southern terminus of the Andes, the Southern Patagonia Ice Fields, sub-Antarctic rainforests, glaciers, fjords, lakes, wetlands, valleys, channels, and islands. The marine environment is...

Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances, i.e., β-diversity, is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional turnover in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distances. We p...

The ocean contains unique biodiversity, provides valuable food resources and is a major sink for anthropogenic carbon. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an effective tool for restoring ocean biodiversity and ecosystem services1,2, but at present only 2.7% of the ocean is highly protected³. This low level of ocean protection is due largely to confli...

Nearshore fisheries in Hawai‘i have been steadily decreasing for over a century. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been utilized as a method to both conserve biodiversity and enhance fisheries. The composition of resource fishes within and directly outside of the recently established Hā‘ena Community Based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA) on the i...

Preface special issue: "Advances in science for ecology and sustainable management of oceanic islands" Oceanic island ecosystems are among the most fragile on the planet. A large number of recent species extinctions have been described from these ecosystems, which have been primarily driven by anthropogenic impacts (Wood et al., 2017). In the 17th...

The Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges are two seamount chains of volcanic origin, which include over 110 seamounts that collectively stretch across over 2,900 km in the southeastern Pacific. Ecosystems in this region are isolated by the Atacama Trench, the Humboldt Current System, and an extreme oxygen minimum zone. This isolation has produced a uniqu...

Coral reef fisheries provide important ecosystem services to coastal communities, yet in the Pacific Islands, many of these contemporary fisheries are threatened by overexploitation. Historically, Pacific Island societies successfully utilized community-based management and spatial temporal closures to regulate the harvest of marine resources. In r...

Informe de las Expediciones de National Geographic Pristine Seas y Comunidades Kawésqar y Yagán.

• Marine protected areas (MPAs) are becoming a widely used tool for the conservation of biodiversity and for fishery management; however, most of these areas are designed without prior knowledge of the basic ecological aspects of the species that they are trying to protect. • This study investigated the movement of two top predators: the Galapagos...

Significance Strategically siting marine protected areas (MPAs) in overfished fisheries can have important conservation and food provisioning benefits. We use distribution data for 1,338 commercially important fisheries stocks around the world to model how MPAs in different locations would affect catch. We show that strategically expanding the exis...

Fig. 1 In situ imagery of Hydrolagus melanophasma (1367 m) at Clipperton Atoll (N 10.23993, W − 109.21736). a Adult male approaching camera; b aggregation of males; c adult female with egg cases visible; d female with egg cases co-occur with two males over rock and sand habitat with low relief Communicated by L. Menzel Electronic supplementary mate...

• Reef fish biomass is increasingly recognized as a key indicator of fishery and biodiversity status linked to ecosystem integrity on coral reefs, and yet the evaluation of appropriate baselines for biomass, and what drives variation in potential baselines, is sparse. • Variability in reef fishable biomass was assessed to test for the existence of...

Pacific Island nations and territories must build their capacity to harvest pelagic fishes to ensure domestic food security into the future. The Republic of Palau recently created the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, a Marine Managed Area that was intended to conserve marine resources and enhance local pelagic fisheries. However, the capacity of th...

Knowledge of continental shelf faunal biodiversity of Antarctica is patchy and as such, the ecology of this unique ecosystem is not fully understood. To this end, we deployed baited cameras at 20 locations along~500 km of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) at depths from 90 to 797 m. We identified 111 unique taxa, with mud bottom accounting for...

Coral reefs are widely regarded as one of the top science and conservation priorities globally, as previous research has demonstrated that these ecosystems harbor an extraordinary biodiversity, myriad ecosystem services, and are highly vulnerable to human stressors. However, most of this knowledge is derived from studies on nearshore and shallow-wa...

Teleost fish that form predictable spawning aggregations and undertake reproductive migrations can be particularly vulnerable to overexploitation. To support community-based management of an artisanal fishery that targets bonefish (Albula glossodonta) spawning aggregations, we used a combination of acoustic telemetry, biological sampling, and remot...

• The people of the Pacific have long relied on the ocean for sustenance, commerce and cultural identity, which resulted in a sophisticated understanding of the marine environment and its conservation. • The global declines in ocean health require new and innovative approaches to conserving marine ecosystems. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been...

Aim Species ranges provide a valuable foundation for resolving biogeographical regions, evolutionary processes and extinction risks. To inform conservation priorities, here we develop the first bioregionalization based on reef fish abundance of the Hawaiian Archipelago, which spans nearly 10° of latitude across 2,400 km, including 8 high volcanic i...

Large‐scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs) have proliferated in recent years, now accounting for most of the world's MPA coverage. However, little is known about LSMPA outcomes and the factors that affect them. Here we argue that policy interactions—the cumulative effect of co‐existing policies for an issue and/or geographical area—can play a crit...

Animals across vertebrate taxa form social communities and often exist as fission–fusion groups. Central place foragers (CPF) may form groups from which they will predictably disperse to forage, either individually or in smaller groups, before returning to fuse with the larger group. However, the function and stability of social associations in pre...

Aim The ‘abundant centre’ hypothesis states that species are more abundant at the centre of their range. However, several recent large‐scale studies have failed to find evidence for such a pattern. Here we used extensive global data of reef fishes to test the ‘abundant centre’ pattern, and to examine variation in the abundance patterns across speci...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are used to interpret and map fish distributions based on habitat variables and other drivers. Reef fish avoidance behavior has been shown to vary in the presence of divers and is primarily driven by spearfishing pressure. Diver avoidance behavior or fish wariness may spatially influence counts and other descripti...

Social networks have been and remain important in Oceania for building and maintaining social-ecological resilience. However, there is little quantitative information on the role of fish and fishing in resource sharing networks and how networks may be impacted by socioeconomic and environmental changes, which is critical information for developing...

A complex landscape for reef management Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse systems in the ocean, and they provide both food and ecological services. They are also highly threatened by climate change and human pressure. Cinner et al. looked at how best to maximize three key components of reef use and health: fish biomass, parrotfish grazing,...

The kelp forests of southern South America are some of the least disturbed on the planet. The remoteness of this region has, until recently, spared it from many of the direct anthropo-genic stressors that have negatively affected these ecosystems elsewhere. Re-surveys of 11 locations at the easternmost extent of Tierra del Fuego originally conducte...

Reef fishes are an important component of marine biodiversity, and changes in the composition of the assemblage structure may indicate ecological, climatic, or anthropogenic disturbances. To examine spatial differences in the reef fish assemblage structure around Easter Island, eight sites were sampled during autumn and summer 2016–2017 with baited...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000366.].

Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and management requires identification of the environmental and socioeconomic factors driving the persistence of scleractinian coral assemblages—the foundation species of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we...

Since the 1950s, industrial fisheries have expanded globally, as fishing vessels are required to travel further afield for fishing opportunities. Technological advancements and fishery subsidies have granted ever-increasing access to populations of sharks, tunas, billfishes, and other predators. Wilderness refuges, defined here as areas beyond the...