Healthy marine ecosystems are crucial for people’s livelihoods and food production. Global climate stressors, such as warming and ocean acidification, can drastically impact the structure and function of marine food webs, diminishing the production of goods and services. Our ability to predict how future food webs will respond to a changing environment is limited by our understanding of species responses to climate change, which are often tested in isolation or in simplified experimental designs.

Coral reefs are among Earth’s best-studied ecosystems, yet the degree to which large predators influence the ecology of coral reefs remains an open and contentious question. Recent studies indicate the consumptive effects of large reef predators are too diffuse to elicit trophic cascades. Here, we provide evidence that such predators can produce non-consumptive (fear) effects that flow through herbivores to shape the distribution of seaweed on a coral reef.

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Against the backdrop of a dwindling marine fisheries resource base, declining catch rates, and escalating conflicts about securing rights over oceanic resources, this paper emphasises the need to relook at the marine fisheries regulatory regime in the country with a view to better align it to address outstanding issues and emerging challenges.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) is the largest network of marine reserves in the world, yet little is known of the efficacy of no-fishing zones in the relatively lightly-exploited remote parts of the system (i.e., northern regions). Here, we find that the detection of reserve effects is challenging and that heterogeneity in benthic habitat composition, specifically branching coral cover, is one of the strongest driving forces of fish assemblages.

Chlorinated paraffins (CPs) are highly complex technical mixtures, and the short chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) are classed as persistent and have been included in the Stockholm Convention. However, there have been few studies of SCCPs and medium chain chlorinated paraffins (MCCPs) and their bioaccumulation and biomagnification in different species of fish. The present study investigated the levels, congener group profiles, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification of SCCPs and MCCPs in different species of fish from Liaodong Bay, North China.