Spawning Aggregations in Belize: Signs of Life in the Seas that Need Protection (Part 1 of 3)

A Nassau grouper during spawning aggregation. Photo Credit: Virginia Burns Perez/Wildlife Conservation Society

By Aaron Humes: As a country that depends on fishing for multiple national and personal income sources, Belize is paying increasing attention to the fish stocks in its waters. This is so especially as attention has been drawn to the long-term depletion of such stocks for commercial and domestic use.

But testimony from fishermen on the seas suggests that over the years there has been a severe reduction in the fish stock, due to a variety of reasons, from overfishing to predation to climate change. Some believe that not enough is being done to help fishermen diversify and ensure that populations are not overfished and allowed to grow naturally in order to keep a sustainable stock.
A fisherman from Seine Bight, Stann Creek District, Densfield Augustine, is just recently back from a trip out to the Gladden Spit Marine Reserve off the Stann Creek District. He explains that “the size has definitely fallen, the quantity has definitely fallen; there is a theory among most of us fishermen that the fish that are out there are further away and deeper.” He has been fishing full-time for four years after doing so mostly recreationally. He further observes that the usage of electrical reels has further reduced the stock which hampers traditional “landline” fishing.

Importance of the spawning aggregations sites

Multiple research efforts have indicated that Spawning Aggregations or SPAGs are the most common means of reproduction among many reef fishes of commercial interest: the Nassau grouper, the mutton snapper, the black grouper or ‘rock fish,’ the cubera snapper or ‘red snapper’ and the red hind or ‘Jimmy Hind’. Apart from the snappers and groupers, the SPAGs are also critical to the reproductive ecology of a number of other species such as parrotfishes, surgeonfishes and wrasses.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) defines Spawning Aggregations, or SPAG, as “A phenomenon [whereby] sexually mature fishes of a particular species gather in large numbers to reproduce in response to a medley of environmental and physiological cues”.
The geographic locations of the SPAGs are not arbitrary. As explained by marine biologist George Myvett, “They occur at certain nexuses along the main barrier reef, as well as the offshore atolls of Turneffe, Glovers Reef and Lighthouse Reef. These locations occur at certain depths along these reef systems where the reef formations make sharp turns or convex contours, referred to by local fishers as ‘Point of Reef’ …these ‘Point of Reef’ makes for relatively strong offshore directional currents that would be crucial to the broadcasting or effective dispersal of the spawns of the aggregating fish stocks.”

Myvett described spawning aggregations as “a mass congress or gathering of the males and females that would episodically synchronize their spawning behavior – ejecting sperm and eggs to be ‘externally fertilized.’ These aggregations are highly predictable in both space and time: they occur in the same location year after year. For that reason, they have historically been a major attractor and indeed boon for fishers in Belize in terms of their capacity and record of major landings or catches.

This story continues with Part 2 and Part 3.

This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

 

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