In a counterintuitive discovery, scientists have found that ocean fish species that grow quickly and reproduce frequently are more likely to experience dramatic plunges in population than larger, slower growing fish such as sharks or tuna.
"Rabbits are doing pretty well compared to rhinos. Mice thrive while lions, tigers and elephants are endangered," said Malin Pinsky, assistant professor of ecology and evolution in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University in US.
After studying population changes in 154 species of fish worldwide over 60 years, Pinsky was surprised to see marine equivalents of rabbits and mice collapsing to low levels - still shy of extinction but serious enough to disrupt ocean food chains or fishing-based societies.
In his research, Pinsky found that in nearly all of the cases, overfishing was the culprit. "Climate variations or natural boom-and-bust cycles contribute to population fluctuation in small fast-growing fish, but when they are not over-fished, our data showed that their populations didn't have any more tendency to collapse than other fish," Pinsky said.
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