237 
NOAA 
National Marine 
Fisheries Service 
Abstract— Coral reef fisheries have 
a cultural, economic, and ecological 
importance and sustain the societal 
well-being of many coastal commu- 
nities. However, the complexities of 
the multigear, multispecies fisheries 
that target coral reef species pose 
challenges for fisheries management. 
We focus on the Guam shore-based 
coral reef fishery 1) to evaluate the 
characteristics of the past and re- 
cent fishery in terms of catch com- 
position and effort per gear type and 
2) to reconstruct the reef-fish popu- 
lation in shallow (depths <30 m) 
water during 1985-2012. To accom- 
plish this, we used the results from 
a detailed creel survey conducted by 
the Guam Division of Aquatic and 
Wildlife Resources. The total esti- 
mated effort has stayed more or less 
stable; however, the estimated total 
catch has dropped from an annual 
mean of 100 metric tons (t) during 
the period 1985-1990 to 37 t dur- 
ing the period 2007-2012. Catch per 
unit of effort (CPUE) declined for 
most gear types between the 2 time 
periods. Reconstruction of histori- 
cal targeted fish biomass, based on 
CPUE, showed a general decrease in 
biomass from 1985 to 2012. Biomass 
quickly dropped to about half of the 
1985 values, then leveled off for a 
decade before declining again begin- 
ning in 2003 and continuing through 
2012. 
Manuscript submitted: 30 April 2015. 
Manuscript accepted: 2 March 2016. 
Fish. Bull. 114:237-256 (2016). 
Online publication date: 18 March 2016. 
doi: 10. 7755/FB. 114.2.9 
The views and opinions expressed or 
implied in this article are those of the 
author (or authors) and do not necessarily 
reflect the position of the National 
Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. 
Fishery Bulletin 
fir established 1881 ■<?. 
Spencer F. Baird 
First U S. Commissioner 
of Fisheries and founder 
of Fishery Bulletin 
Trends in biomass of coral reef fishes, derived 
from shore-based creel surveys in Guam 
Mariska Weijerman (contact author ) 1 - 2 
Ivor Williams 3 
Jay Gutierrez 4 
Shanna Grafeld 5 
Brent Tibbatts 4 
Gerry Davis 6 
Email address for contact author: mariska.weiierman@noaa.gov 
1 Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric 
Research 
School for Ocean and Earth Science and 
Technology 
University of Hawaii at Manoa 
Marine Science Building 312 
1000 Pope Road 
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 
2 Environmental System Analysis Group 
Wagenmgen University 
PO. Box 47 
6700 AA Wageningen, Netherlands 
3 Coral Reef Ecosystem Program 
Ecosystem Sciences Division 
Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center 
National Mariner Fisheries Service, NOAA 
1845 Wasp Boulevard, Building 176 
Honolulu, Hawaii 96818 
4 Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources 
Guam Department of Agriculture 
163 Dairy Road 
Mangilao, Guam 96913 
5 Department of Natural Resources and 
Environmental Management 
University of Hawaii at Manoa 
1910 East-West Road 
Sherman Laboratory 101 
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 
6 Habitat Conservation Division 
Pacific Islands Regional Office 
National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA 
1845 Wasp Boulevard, Building 176 
Honolulu, Hawaii 96818 
Coral reef fishing is an important 
activity for the social and economic 
welfare of many coastal communities 
(Dalzell et ah, 1996; Moberg and Fol- 
ke, 1999). Both commercial and rec- 
reational fishing provides jobs, and 
fishing expenditures generate mil- 
lions of dollars in sales revenues and 
value-added benefits to the states 
and territories of the United States 
that have coral reefs (Craig, 2008). 
Healthy fish stocks also support 
marine recreational activities, such 
as scuba diving (Parsons and Thur, 
2008). Furthermore, in many Pacific 
islands, coral reef fisheries serve vital 
nonmarket functions, such as build- 
ing social and community networks, 
perpetuating fishing traditions, and 
providing food for local communities 
(Dalzell et ah, 1996; Plaganyi et al., 
2013; Zeller et al., 2015). 
Despite their socio-economic im- 
portance, reef-associated fisheries 
have received relatively little atten- 
tion, especially when compared with 
pelagic fisheries (Sadovy, 2005), and 
comprehensive data for reef fisheries 
are often lacking (Warren-Rhodes et 
al., 2003; Houk et al., 2012). Further- 
more, reef fisheries are particularly 
challenging to assess because they 
typically are more complex than pe- 
lagic fisheries (Dalzell, 1996). Gener- 
ally, multiple gear types are used in 
reef fisheries, and each gear type has 
its own selectivity and targets mul- 
tiple species, resulting in overlaps 
in the composition of the landings of 
reef fisheries (Dalzell, 1996; McCla- 
nahan and Cinner, 2008). A global 
