128 
Fishery Bulletin 1 14(1) 
ns 
O 
Decrease in catch limits for tourists 
Recreational fishing 
' > 'H. I! 
Seafood consumption 
1990 
2000 
2010 
Figure 4 
Demand for local fishes, measured as catch in metric tons (t), driven 
by tourism by both stopover visitors and visitors who arrived by cruise 
ship in The Bahamas during 1950-2010. Arrows indicate periods when 
changes were made to regulations of catch limits for tourists engaged in 
recreational fishing. 
marized in Fig. 3B). Pelagic gamefishes accounted for 
the greatest proportion of catch during 1950-2010 
(41%), followed closely by Caribbean spiny lobster 
(35%), and queen conch, groupers, and snappers each 
accounted for less than 10% of total catch (Fig. 3B). 
Over the last decade (i.e., 2000-2010), however, catch 
of Caribbean spiny lobster (51%) has surpassed catch 
of pelagic gamefishes (29%). 
Commercial fishery 
Reconstructed total catch during 1950-2010 by the ar- 
tisanal fishery totaled 103,800 t, increasing from 560 
t/year in 1950 to a peak of 3060 t/year in 1994 before 
declining to just under 2180 t/year by 2010 (Fig. 3A). 
In contrast, catch of the large-scale fishery for Carib- 
bean spiny lobster during 1950-2010 totaled 257,400 t, 
accounting for 71% of reconstructed total commercial 
catch (i.e., catch from both the artisanal fishery and 
the large-scale fishery for Caribbean spiny lobster). 
Large-scale commercial catch of Caribbean spiny lob- 
ster increased from just under 660 t/year in 1950 to a 
peak of nearly 10,900 t/year in 2003, before declining 
slightly to 10,200 t/year in 2010 (Fig. 3A). 
Subsistence fishery 
Reconstructed subsistence catch totaled nearly 33,100 
t during 1950-2010, increasing from 500 t/year in 1950 
to a peak of around 740 t/year in the late 1960s, before 
declining to 590 t/year in 2010 (Fig. 3A). The majority 
of catch (69%) was taken by residents of the Family 
Islands, despite the size of the population of residents 
there being 75% smaller than that of the resident popu- 
lation on the more developed islands of New Providence 
and Grand Bahama. 
Recreational fishery 
Reconstructed recreational catch for 
the period 1950-2010 was 490,100 t; of 
this catch, less than 1% (around 420 t) 
was attributed to major tournaments. 
Catch increased from 600 t/year in 
1950 to a peak of around 16,100 t/year 
in 1985, before declining rapidly to 
7300 t/year in 1986 after the introduc- 
tion of maximum catch limits for key 
taxa for visitors who fish recreational- 
ly. A second, but smaller peak occurred 
in 2006 at 9000 t/year before again de- 
clining sharply to just under 5700 t/ 
year in 2010 because of revisions made 
in 2007 to the recreational fishing reg- 
ulations for visitors (Fig. 3A). 
Tourist demand for local fishes 
Tourist demand for local fishes 
(through recreational fishing and from 
hotel restaurants) from 1950 through 
2010 totaled 661,800 t, accounting for 75% of recon- 
structed total catches in the entire country (Fig. 4). The 
total number of visitors to The Bahamas each year is 
in the millions, and visitors have outnumbered the res- 
ident population by an order of magnitude for nearly 
half a century (Fig. 1). It is, therefore, not surprising 
that tourism has such a sizeable effect on fisheries re- 
movals in The Bahamas. Demand increased from 660 
t/year in 1950 to a peak of more than 19,800 t/year 
in 1985 before declining to 9100 t/year in 2010 (Fig. 
4). Almost two-thirds of this demand (435,900 t) was 
driven by recreational fishing by stopover visitors, and 
the remainder was a result of seafood consumption 
by stopover visitors (34%) and by visitors from cruise 
ships (0.3%) (Fig. 4). Although there were 13% more 
visitors from cruise ships than stopover visitors during 
1950-2010, it is not surprising that less than 1% of de- 
mand was attributed to visitors who arrived by cruise 
ship, given that only a small fraction of them consumed 
local seafood and that none fished recreationally dur- 
ing their stay. 
Discussion 
Reconstructed total catches were 2.6 times the landings 
reported by the FAO for The Bahamas. The magnitude 
of the discrepancy between our reconstructed estimate 
and officially reported statistics is comparable to results 
from reconstruction studies of the fisheries of other small 
island nations, findings that ranged from a 1.2-fold dif- 
ference in the case of the Azores (1950—2010; Pham et 
ah, 2013) to an average 2.5-fold difference for 25 Pacific 
island countries and territories (Zeller et ah, 2015). 
In our study, the source of discrepancy for The Ba- 
hamas was twofold. First, only commercial landings 
