Rotational harvesting is a risky strategy for vulnerable marine animals

Abstract

Sea cucumber fisheries exemplify resource systems under intense exploitation pressure from lucrative Asian markets. Plagányi et al. (1) model the performance of rotational harvests of sea cucumbers on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and advocate it globally. The authors support their aim to evaluate management models but believe the tenets of the strategy are flawed, key model inputs bias the outputs, and inferences to other coastal fisheries are overreaching.