Assessment of Coral Reef Fish Population at Pulau Payar Marine Park and Adjacent Waters

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Date
2008-05
Authors
Man, Alias
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Abstract
Malaysia, through the Department of Fisheries, has established marine protected area or marine parks since 1984 to alleviate the problem of low fishery catches due to overfishing. Since its establishment, it is not known whether the marine parks are performing as expected, as there were no information available on the productivity status of fish and coral in these marine parks. To know the present state of coral and fish in the marine park, a study on Pulau Payar Marine Park in Kedah was conducted from 2001 to 2005. In this study, environmentally-friendly methods were implemented to sample fish and corals in the protected marine park, while trawl was used to sample fish in the harvest area or area open for fishing outside of the marine park. Three different fish populations have been identified, they are the coral reef fish population inside the protected area, the coral reef-related fish population just outside of the park, and the coastal fish population near the mainland. The average density of fish for the three fish populations were 29,000 kg/km2, 682 kg/km2 and 825 kg/km2 respectively. For the fish population inside the park, results show that there exists a positive relationship between coral cover and fish density, such that, for every increase in the percentage of coral cover, fish density would increase at the rate of 1,300 kg/km2. At present, the average coral cover was between 10-15 percent. With relatively high density of fish in the protected park as compared to the harvest area, it could attract more fishermen to fish nearby, looking for the spillover fishes. To ensure continuous replenishment of the fish population in the harvest area, it is important to improve the protection of the park. With improved protection of the park's habitat and its fishery resources, more benefits could be generated through higher quantity of spillover fishes to the harvest area.
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Coral Reef , Pulau Payar
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