BEHAVIOR OF MARINE FISHES BEHAVIOR OF MARINE FISHES: Capture Processes and Conservation Challenges Understanding fish behavior in relation to capture processes in marine fisheries is of fundamental importance to reducing bycatch and discards, and to enhancing marine fisheries conservation efforts. A thorough understanding of this allows commercial fishers to more effectively capture target species while reducing the catch of unwanted species. Behavior of Marine Fishes: Capture Processes and Conservation Challenges provides the reader with principles, patterns, and characteristics on fish behavior and fish capture processes using several types of important commercial fishing gears. The book also highlights conservation challenges facing the marine capture fisheries in efforts to maintain sustainable use of marine resources and to reduce negative impacts to the marine ecosystem. This volume, with contributions from leading applied fish behaviorists and fishing gear technologists from around the world, will be a valuable reference for researchers, fishing gear technologists, fisheries managers, students, and conservationists. SPECIAL FEATURES: Synthesis of current research and valuable knowledge that will help reduce bycatch and discards in commercial fisheries Review of basic fish behavioral principles and patterns and their relation to capture methods and conservation efforts Contributions from leading international applied fish behaviorists and fishing gear technologists

This book is about the behaviour of teleosts, a well-defined, highly successful, taxonomic group of vertebrate animals sharing a common body plan and forming the vast majority of living bony fishes. There are weH over 22000 living species of teleosts, including nearly all those of importance in com mercial fisheries and aquaculture. Teleosts are represented injust about every conceivable aquatic environment from temporary desert pools to the deep ocean, from soda lakes to sub-zero Antarctic waters. Behaviour is the primary interface between these effective survival machines and their environment: behavioural plasticity is one of the keys to their success. The study of animal behaviour has undergone revolutionary changes in the past decade under the dual impact of behavioural ecology and sociobiology. The modern body of theory provides quantitatively testable and experi mentaHy accessible hypotheses. Much current work in animal behaviour has concentrated on birds and mammals, animals with ostensibly more complex structure, physiology and behavioural capacity, but there is a growing body of information about the behaviour of fishes. There is now increasing awareness that the same ecological and evolutionary rules govern teleost fish, and that their behaviour is not just a simplified version of that seen in birds and mammals. The details of fish behaviour intimately reflect unique and efficient adaptations to their three-dimensional aquatic environment.

Fishes are by far the most species-rich vertebrate taxon, and it is also the vertebrate group with the most strikingly diverse repertoire of behaviours and behavioural adaptations. As such, they provide us with many opportunities to explore the fascinating complexities of animal behaviour. Central questions addressed in this book include: How do se