Parrotfish on menu puts coral at risk

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL3072276220071031

LONDON (Reuters) - The delicate balance of the Caribbean's coral reefs is in jeopardy as more parrotfish end up on dinner plates, international scientists said on Wednesday.

The colorful grazing fish, named for their parrot-like beaks which are used to scrape up algae, play a vital role in stopping seaweed from smothering coral. But their numbers are now being threatened by over-fishing.

New research based on computer modeling shows parrotfish are a key defense in preventing the vulnerable Caribbean reefs from becoming a very different ecosystem -- one dominated not by living coral but by blooms of algae or seaweed.

"The future of some Caribbean reefs is in the balance and if we carry on the way we are then reefs will change forever," said Peter Mumby, a marine biologist from Exeter University, England, who led the research.

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Parrot fish is indeed tasty but that was 25 years ago so I won't feel as badly as I would if I was eating it frequently these days.

Cool fish, very beautiful. It is such a shame what is happening to the reef and to the inhabitants of them. I wonder how many of those fishing there really care?

Assigns a value to flesh for consumption but no value whatsoever to ecosystem services, because as we all know we can eat today but it takes a really long time for those ecosystem services bills to come bite us in the ass. People are terrible about thinking rationally about the long term...short term thinking was much more advantageous, evolutionarily speaking.