“One of the most popular images was the blue parrotfish, which I then used to create a small batch of lapel pins. These quickly became a favorite amongst our collaborators and supporters — including ‘Her Deepness’, the legendary ocean researcher and activist, Dr. Sylvia Earle (with whom I am an Ambassador for the Sargasso Sea Commission) — and soon the pins were a collectors item featured on the event lanyards of many iconic conservationists and politicians.
This year, the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, gathered ocean advocates, scientists, and politicians from over 200 nations. To build on the momentum, I printed a batch of several hundred 1.5” parrotfish stickers to tag the conference ID badges of friends, collaborators, youth leaders, and like-minded conservationists. This proved highly successful and they gained widespread popularity throughout the conference appearing on badges, phone cases and in event-related imagery.
Whilst the blue parrotfish is a stunning image in and of itself, parrotfish have ecological significance in Bermuda and beyond for protecting the reef. In Bermuda, parrotfish are also a conservation and fisheries management success story.
Parrotfish are considered keystone species for coral reef ecosystems, meaning they are critical to the health of the coral and other life. They not only clean algae from corals, keeping them healthy, but they also help produce the fine sand that Bermuda’s beaches are famous for, though natural erosion, calciferous algae, and single-celled organisms called foraminifera, (which makes our sand pink), also play part in that process.
Despite their importance to the health of our reefs, they were routinely caught and sold as filet by the larger commercial fishing operators in the 1970’s and 80’s, prior to the commercial finned fish pot ban. As the industry scaled up to larger vessels and much larger pots it was decimating key reef species and virtually collapsed the entire reef fish ecosystem.
Now, some 30+ years after a subsequent fish pot ban, (whilst other types of fishing is still permitted) the ecosystem has yet to recover properly, with many previously targeted species still commercially extinct, and Bermuda has a lower than expected level of fish biomass found on our otherwise relatively healthy reefs.
A common observation, from world renowned ocean experts, the Cousteaus that I hosted here a few years ago is a perfect example who stated after coming up from a dive: “It's nice to see your healthy corals, but where are your fish?”
In the 80s during my early teens, I spent several summers working as a deckhand for one of the worst offenders. Operating from a larger vessel he took the traditional artesian style 3ft x 3ft pots that could be hauled by hand, and scaled them up to long strings of 10ft x 10ft death-trap pots that could ingest whole schools of fish. I can speak from experience that literally everything larger than the holes in the wire mesh, that entered the traps was pulled to the surface and died. If you would want to eat it (i.e., grouper, snapper, etc.) it was cleaned and sold whole. If you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat it (i.e., parrotfish., etc.) it was sold as filet. If it was too small or inedible, it was thrown into a meat grinder and turned into lobster bait. Seeing our reef fish devastated was an experience I shall never forget and part of the reason why I am now committed to advocate for ocean health and develop tools for sustainable fisheries management and ocean conservation.
A few years later, in 1993, alongside the banning of (finned) fishpots, an outright ban on the fishing of parrotfish was put in place. Although unpopular at the time, more than 30 years later Bermuda is seeing the recovery of many species of parrotfish with spawning aggregations being observed for the first time in decades. Some of these are now found schooling in relative abundance on our reef platform, including giant 2 to 3 ft specimens routinely swimming between tourists feet at popular beaches, a sight unheard of in most of the world where they are still targeted as food.
The Parrotfish is Bermuda’s testament that fisheries management works, but we need to take it further than just focusing on one species and consider our reef eco-systems as a whole.
Whilst Bermuda is still in the midst of a drawn out process to establish marine protected areas (MPAs), the lessons learned from our historical targeted protection of species, such as the outright ban on catching parrotfish, and seasonal protection of spawning aggregation sites for red hind and black grouper show that our reefs are resilient when given a chance, and species can recover. Yet, there is a tipping point where it is too late for the ocean and specific species to bounce back, (in our case several species of once abundant grouper, like the Nassau, never recovered), which is why it’s important for us to take further action to protect our reefs worldwide.
In the case of the parrotfish, their recovery is arguably one of many factors why our reef remains relatively healthy (despite the general lack of fish) as their continuous grazing helps keep the algae in check which can otherwise stress a reef, and during extreme events can overwhelm corals before they have time to recover.
It is therefore my humble opinion and suggestion that we should work to protect our reefs as a whole, in a way that is implemented and enforced. And where this is not possible, then at the very least, spawning aggregations should not be targeted, and protecting parrotfish and other grazers should be considered.”
*These are personal opinions based upon decades of observations in Bermuda. I fully appreciate that these are complex issues, and there may be locations where excessive grazing by parrotfish negatively impact corals when they in turn are not kept in check by apex predators such as sharks. However, this shows a larger imbalance to the health of our reefs, that we should work together to restore.
Protect the Parrotfish - Protect the Reef.
J-P Rouja | Founder > Nonsuch Expeditions | Co-Founder > BioQuest & Station-B
