Historical dynamics of the demersal fish community in the East and South China Seas

Taiwan has a long history of fishery operations and contributes significantly to global fishery harvest. The East and South China seas are important fishing grounds with very limited public data. More efforts are needed to digitize and analyze historical catch rate data to illuminate species and community changes in this region. In this study, we digitize historical records of catch and effort from government fishery reports for nine commercial species caught by otter trawl, reported quarterly from 1970 to 2001 from the East and South China Seas. We analyze the four seasons and present abundance indices, distributions and among-species correlations for nine commercially important species from 1970-1988 (a period with high fishing effort) using a multispecies spatio-temporal model that estimates both covariation in multispecies catch rates, attributed to spatial habitat preferences and environmental responses, and indices representing trends in abundance and distribution. We find substan...