Cui Liang

Xiamen University | XMU · State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science

To date, the intricacies and efficacy of how periodic seasonal environmental fluctuations affect fish populations in biogeography in the context of profound climate change remain to be elucidated. Collected monitoring data on fish resources in the Temperature Estuary provide an excellent opportunity to assess the effects of seasonal environmental f...

The conventional view of spawning in iteroparous bony fish, i.e., the “reproductive drain hypothesis,” is based on the observation that somatic growth (in length) slows down noticeably at approximately the time fish attain maturity, and hence the assumption is made that investment in gonadal development slows down growth. However, when this is tran...

Some comments on the suitability of stocks for analysis with CMSY++ It is important to realize that every method, when applied to unsuitable data, will fail to provide reasonable results. Thus, this document attempts to provide some insights into the applicability of the data-limited CMSY++ method, by taking a closer look at the features of some st...

Following an introduction to the nature of fisheries catches and their information content, a new development of CMSY, a data-limited stock assessment method for fishes and invertebrates, is presented. This new version, CMSY++, overcomes several of the deficiencies of CMSY, which itself improved upon the “Catch-MSY” method published by S. Martell a...

The offshore waters of the Yangtze Estuary are an important fish habitat, and the large gradient of environmental conditions leads to different fish assemblages. We studied the spatial and temporal variations in fish assemblages and their relationships with environmental factors in the offshore waters of the Yangtze Estuary during the autumns of 20...

Catches have remained relatively high in the Gulf of Thailand and the Bohai Sea, China, despite severe biomass declines (around 95%) evidenced by fishery-independent surveys. Such high production at very low stock sizes is not predicted by simple-surplus production theory, but can be explained by age-structured models that predict high recruitment...

River-ocean continuums are rich environments key to the transformations of organic matter and nutrients from many sources. Human impacts on these ecosystems can be local, upstream, or global. Particulate organic matter provides one tool for exploring these processes; inventories and carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes are useful indicators. This st...

Estuaries are nutrient-rich environments with a gradient of fresh to salt water. They support high primary productivity and an abundance of zooplankton. Estuaries are used by many fish as nursery grounds because their environmental conditions provide abundant food for larval and adult fish. Ichthyoplankton, which comprise fish eggs and larvae, are...

Miyagawa et al. (2021) (hereafter “Mi2021”) published a commentary on our original research paper, “Stock Status Assessments for 12 Exploited Fishery Species in the Tsushima Warm Current Region, Southwest Japan and East China, Using the CMSY and BSM Methods (Wang et al., 2020).” However, we feel that most of their comments are unsupported and deser...

We applied Catch and Maximum Sustainable Yield (CMSY), Bayesian Schaefer model (BSM), and Abundance Maximum Sustainable Yield (AMSY) methods to estimate the status of Platycephalus indicus stocks in the Bohai and Yellow Seas, assessed model performance, and determined the impact of priors derived from expert knowledge on the performance of each mod...

In recent years, the proportion and economic value of Lophius litulon (family Lophiidae) in the coastal fishery off Shandong Province, China has increased. In this study, we mapped the distribution of L. litulon abundance [catch per unit effort (CPUE)] and applied a generalized additive model (GAM) to explore the relationship between CPUE and envir...

Global warming affects the phenology of the Earth’s flora and fauna, notably by advancing the date at which many plants and animals tend to reproduce. We use fish, where this reproductive acceleration is well-documented, to present a simple approach based on sine curves to predict, in spring spawning fish, the minimum number of days (Δdmin) that sp...

The prevailing determinant of maturation in fishes is thought to be a redirection of energy from growth to reproduction. Instead, the Gill Oxygen Limitation Theory predicts that maturation, and thus reproduction, is induced when a fish reaches a critical ratio of oxygen supply to demand (Qm/Qmaint). The consistency of this critical ratio has been p...

Estuaries, where fresh and salty water converge, provide abundant nutrients for ichthyoplankton. Ichthyoplankton, including fish eggs, larvae, and juveniles, are important fishery recruitment resources. The Yangtze Estuary and its adjacent waters comprise a typical large-scale estuary and supply many important fish spawning, feeding, and breeding a...

The Chaetognatha are a marine invertebrate phylum including 132 extant, carnivorous species in nine families and two orders, but with unclear protostomian affinities in the animal kingdom. We document the gradual recognition of the distinctiveness of chaetognaths by early taxonomists, with some emphasis on the often-overlooked studies by Chinese ma...

The status of fishery resources in the Yangtze estuary and its adjacent waters is still unclear for the effective implementation of fishery management strategies. To help address this gap, a new method especially for data-limited fish stocks (LBB) was applied to assess seven commercially and ecotrophically important fish stocks. Fish specimens were...

Although fisheries for invertebrates are increasing rapidly worldwide, many of them lack the rigid assessments and regulations that are typical of finfish fisheries. We report nektonic invertebrate communities of the Yangtze River estuary in the boreal autumn (November) from 2013 to 2017, and report how these are related to environmental variables....

Sixteen marine fish species (populations) exploited by Chinese fisheries were assessed, using published time series of catch and the CMSY and BSM methods. Given the catch times series as inputs, some ancillary information and reasonable constraints, carrying capacity, maximum sustainable yield, and likely time series of biomass and exploitation rat...

The catch-maximum sustainable yield (CMSY) method and a closely related Bayesian state-space Schaefer surplus production model (BSM) were combined with published catch data and catch per unit effort (CPUE) time series or spawning stock biomass (SSB) data to evaluate fisheries reference points for exploited resources of the Japan Sea. Eleven fish an...

This contribution presented stock assessments for 10 fish and 2 squid populations exploited by Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese fishing fleets in the Tsushima Warm Current region, i.e., Southwest Japan and East China. The methods used were a Monte Carlo method (CMSY) and a Bayesian state-space implementation of the Schaefer model (BSM), based on...

We assessed 12 marine fish species in the Northwestern Pacific exploited by Japanese fisheries, using published catch time series, CPUE data and the CMSY and BSM methods. The results showed that one stock was severely depleted, three stocks were outside of safe biological limits, three stocks were fully/overfished, three stocks were recovering, whi...

The status of 15 marine fish and invertebrate populations exploited by Chinese, South Korean or Japanese fishing fleets were assessed, using two newly developed computer-intensive methods, CMSY and BSM. The results show that among the 15 populations in question, 2 have collapsed, 3 are grossly over-fished and 9 are overfished. Also, we compared res...

Due to limited data availability, only a small subset of the exploited fish and invertebrate populations have been assessed along Chinese coasts, which precludes comprehensive management of the fisheries. Here, we applied a length-based Bayesian biomass estimator (LBB) to 14 fish and invertebrate stocks in China’s coastal waters to estimate their g...

The rationale and a strategy for the estimation of length‐weight relationships (LWR) using preserved specimens of less common fish species in museums is presented, along with preliminary results pertaining to 56 specimens and 31 species of fish from the Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia, the Marine Biological Specimen Museum of Chinese Academy o...

Two investigations of the Changjiang River mainstream and forty-two cruise surveys of the estuary were conducted to determine the distribution of the dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), phosphorus (DIP), and silicon (DSi) contents in the Changjiang, as well as the long-term nutrient transportation trends and impacts on the estuary. The N and P cont...

Ocean warming can strongly impact marine fisheries; notably, it can cause the “mean temperature of the catch” (MTC) to increase, an indicator of the tropicalization of fisheries catches. In this contribution, we explore MTC changes in three large marine ecosystems (LMEs) along China's coasts, i.e., the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Se...

Given the scarcity of information suitable for other forms of fish stock assessments, the growth, and mortality of 10 important marine exploited fishes in China's coastal seas were estimated, based on published length-frequency data and the ELEFAN approach and software. The resulting parameters, complemented with growth curves from FishBase were th...

Intensive fishing can strongly impact marine ecosystems; among other things, it usually causes the mean trophic level of the catches to decline, an indicator of the occurrence of the ‘fishing down’ (FD) phenomenon. Although FD occurs throughout the world oceans, it can easily be masked by diverse factors, which has misled authors as to its generali...

Trophic levels for the studied 22 species and 5 genera. (DOCX)

Estimated growth and mortality parameters in 2000s for 10 commercially exploited fishes in China?s seas. (DOCX)

Time series of Chinese catches (in tonnes) from the East China Sea Large Marine Ecosystem (from successive China Fishery Statistical Yearbook). (DOCX)