Benguela marine system
Brief description
Two major ecosystem regime shifts in the southern Benguela were identified by Howard et al. (2007) – the first was mainly attributed to overfishing activities with some environmental influence that occurred in the late 1950s. The second regime shift occurred from the 1990s to 2000s and found to be primarily the result of environmental shifts (Howard et al., 2007), but aggravated by fishing activities (Coetzee et al., 2008; Blamey et al., 2012). The implications of commercially important marine species shifting in this system are significant as it has social, economic and ecological ramifications for South African fisheries and other sectors, including livelihoods, which directly or indirectly rely on these productive ecosystem services (Jarre et al., 2015; Watermeyer et al., 2016)
Key References
- Howard, J. a. E., Jarre, A., Clark, A. E. & Moloney, C. L. 2007. Application of the sequential t-test algorithm for analysing regime shifts to the southern Benguela ecosystem. African Journal of Marine Science, 29: 437-451.
