Figure 3.

Selected effects of 1998 bleaching event on reef fish community structure in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) calculated from before (1993–1995) versus after (2005) the 1998 El Niño Southern Oscillation. Observed effects include a lower (a) species richness and (b) fewer small (<20 cm TL) fish, where corals were depleted between the two time periods; open circles indicate fished areas, closed circles have protected status; both axes are scaled relative change indices at 66 locations in eight countries; results include mean trends (solid lines) with Bayesian 95% credible intervals (dashed lines); methods provided in Graham et al. (2008). (c) Observed decrease in size-spectral slopes at the majority of WIO locations in 2005. Conceptually, these observations reflect (d) the growth of the existing fish assemblage from 1994 (abscissa) to 2005 (curved line) coupled with substantial losses of small fish owing to lack of coral cover affecting protection and recruitment (data from Graham et al. 2007).