The Caribbean’s Cayman Islands are known for their stunning coral reef ecosystems. Home to a large diversity of marine life, these reefs function as a source of both food of tourism for residents of the three islands. But for some of the reef’s fish, local pressure has led to significant population declines.
The Nassau grouper is one of the Cayman Islands’ reef fish that has struggled the most in recent years. While the Nassau grouper is itself a top predator, the fish is also an important prey for even larger predators, like sharks.
What’s more, the grouper’s eggs are also consumed by whale sharks and manta rays. Given the reliance of larger marine animals on the fish, the Nassau grouper is considered to be a canary in a coal mine’ for coral reefs, meaning the decline of the grouper often indicates a reef is in poor health.
Before their recent decline, the Nassau grouper was once the most common species of grouper in U.S. waters. In 2016, the grouper was listed as threatened’ in the United States under the Endangered Species Act. In the same year, the government of the Cayman Islands enacted legislation for the protection and aided recovery of the fish.
Perhaps most significantly, the legislation prohibited all fishing and selling of Nassau groupers during the fish’s 5-month spawning season.
Refraining from taking marine life when they are spawning is a major component of a sustainable fishery, John Bothwell, Senior Research Officer at the Cayman Islands Department of Energy told Cayman News in 2018. It is one of the reasons why the Cayman Islands, and other fisheries jurisdictions around the world, have closed and open seasons, along with bag and size limits, for marine life that is at risk of being overfished.
The Cayman Island government also enacted size and daily count limits during the now-limited fishing season, and spear-fishing for Nassau groupers was prohibited altogether. Together, these rules aimed to revitalize the Cayman Island’s Nassau grouper population.
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