Meeting Abstract
The effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) on the general health and conservation of single species, habitats, and community interactions is of great biological and recreational interest. However, the high species diversity of southern California kelp forests limits our ability to make general conclusions about MPA effectiveness across a variety of species. Since 2015, we have contributed to the efforts to understand the role of MPAs in kelp forest ecosystems by studying the connection between fitness traits and functional morphology related to feeding for the California moray, Gymnothorax mordax . We chose to compare morays in Blue Cavern Onshore State Marine Conservation Area, which prohibits the take of any species, to those morays living in nearby coves where recreational fishing is permitted. Overall, we found that morays within the MPA were longer, older, heavier, and found in higher densities. As a potential consequence of higher densities, morays within and outside the reserve had similar body conditions, and morays within the MPA exhibited lower growth rates than those outside the MPA. Although morays within the MPA had larger size-corrected vertical and horizontal gape distances, indicating the ability to eat larger prey, morays within the MPA had significantly fewer stomach contents and smaller prey in their stomachs than those outside. Our research efforts show that while the MPA is positively related with age, size, and density of California morays, the MPA may not necessarily increase the fitness of this benthic marine predator. Instead, conditions in the MPA appears to favor alternative feeding strategies, potentially due to morphological variation.
