Different degrees of decline in China's fishing efforts are beneficial to the sustainable development of coral reef fisheries resources on Yongxing Island China

Fishing activities are known to have a predominantly negative impact on coral-reef ecosystem, but with the rise in conservation efforts, the reduction in fishing effort and the resilience of the ecosystem seem sufficient to mitigate the impacts and return to a better state of the ecosystem. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate how fishing practices affect the structure and function of coral-reef ecosystem and explore the role of different fishing strategies in promoting sustainable fishery resource development and effective conservation measures. Utilizing the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) modeling approach, we constructed pre- and post-fishing models (2015 and 2021) for the Yongxing Island reef area. Our findings indicated that a reduction in fishing effort significantly elevated the trophic level within the fishing zone. This phenomenon can primarily be attributed to the resurgence of Imreeffishc2 biomass, specifically within the Chaetodontidae, Mullidae, and Serranidae species. The positive impact of fishing were observed in only 14.63 % of fishery groups in 2015, a figure that is significantly lower than the 27.27 % recorded in 2021 following a reduction in fishing activities. Subsequent simulations of diverse fishing strategies revealed that the majority of populations recuperate with a decrease in fishing effort. However, a minority of groups exhibited a declining trend in biomass, which may be due to competition for food resulting in migration to more hospitable environments. In addition, we conducted simulations to ascertain the optimal vulnerability values across different groups. This study emphasizes the importance of reducing fishing effort as a means of restoring fishery resources and adopting different fishing strategies for different functional groups to achieve sustainable use of fishery resources.