Parrotfish, Revisited: What Our Reef Fish Are Telling Us
In 2016 and 2018, colleagues and I at the Jamaica Institute of Environmental Professionals argued that Jamaica's shrinking parrotfish were a warning about our reefs. The warning still stands.
Dr. Peter Edwards3 min read
Walk onto almost any fishing beach in Jamaica and look at the catch. For years, divers and scientists have noticed not just fewer fish but smaller ones: parrotfish, blue tang and butterflyfish no bigger than the span of a hand. In 2018 we called parrotfish “the proverbial canary in the coalmine” for our fisheries. After a devastating hurricane and a hot El Niño year, it is worth asking what that canary is telling us now.
Why parrotfish matter
Parrotfish are the reef's gardeners. They graze the algae that would otherwise smother living coral. Take out too many and the seaweed wins. Add sewage and fertiliser washing off the land, which feed that seaweed, and the reef declines faster. A degraded reef produces fewer fish, protects the coast less from storm waves and makes less of the white sand our beaches and tourism depend on. Parrotfish are a fisheries issue, a coastal protection issue and a tourism issue all at once.
Why a simple ban is not enough
Every few years there are calls for an outright ban. Our position was, and remains, that a ban without support for the people who depend on fishing will fail. Overfishing is driven partly by poverty and unemployment: too many boats and spear guns in the water. Any solution has to bring fishers into the conversation and offer real alternatives, or it will not be respected or enforced.
What the evidence supports
A time-limited moratorium, announced months in advance so fishers can prepare, with social support funded in part by the sectors that benefit from healthy reefs, such as tourism. Size limits that let young fish grow and leave the big breeding females in the water; we suggested harvesting only fish between roughly 30 and 50 centimetres. An end to commercial spearfishing of parrotfish, including night-time shooting of sleeping fish. Larger mesh in fish pots so juveniles can escape. Bigger, better-enforced fish sanctuaries. And investment in offshore fisheries for tuna, mahi mahi and other open-ocean species, crewed by trained young Jamaicans, so that fishing effort can shift away from the reef.
What to watch now
The questions for today are simple. Are the fish landed at our beaches getting bigger or smaller? Are sanctuaries growing and being enforced? Are fishers being offered alternatives that keep them at sea, such as open-ocean fishing, seaweed farming and oyster culture? Answering them requires data collected consistently over time. Fewer fish means more degraded reefs, weaker coastal protection and a less food-secure nation. We can do better. We must.
Adapted from two Jamaica Institute of Environmental Professionals op-eds co-authored by Peter Edwards with fellow JIEP council members: “Saving the Parrotfish: An Opportunity for Science to Guide Policy” (Jamaica Observer, August 2016) and “Time to Seriously Consider a Moratorium on Parrotfish Harvest” (The Gleaner, 2018).