Twelve years ago (seems like a longtime) we initiated a shore trawl survey
in Morocco (from lat. 19 to about 35. During this short time but with a very
heavy exploitation on the northern parts onf the survey, we experienced what
we have s
we have seen in other parts of the world "species replacement"..
After 6 years of very heavy exploitation we noticed an explosion of two
species "Pagellus senegalensis (looks like scup)" and "Ballistes sp trigerfish"
I could not speculate on what favored this increase in abundance of these
two species, but what I can say is that the carrying capacity of an
ecosystem will always be at its optimum/maximum in terms of biomass but
people have learn to maximize the $ as quickly as the ecosystem.
Last year Balistes (trigerfish) was selling for $2 a Kg when you could not
give it away few years ago.
 
N. Lazar
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