Natural mortality of fish: a review

Area of Science:

• Fisheries Science
• Population Ecology
• Quantitative Biology

Background:

• Natural mortality (M) is a critical parameter in fish stock assessment and population dynamics.
• Understanding current scientific production on M estimation methods is essential for advancing fisheries management.
• Existing methods for estimating M have limitations that necessitate further development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze scientific production on natural mortality (M) in fish.
• To identify and evaluate existing methods for estimating M.
• To determine the most commonly used M estimators in scientific literature.

Main Methods:

• Bibliometric and systematic analysis of scientific papers.
• Data sourced from the Web of Science (WoS) database.
• Evaluation of journal relevance, paper citation counts, author recognition, and keyword co-occurrence.

Main Results:

• The study focused on the 100 most cited papers on natural mortality.
• Hoenig (1983) and Pauly (1980b) were identified as the most frequently used M estimators.
• Only 19 papers estimated M for 28 species, with a focus on population dynamics (58%) and stock assessments (42%).

Conclusions:

• Review highlights the prevalence of established M estimators like Hoenig and Pauly.
• There is a need for developing more sophisticated M estimation methods.
• Future research should incorporate novel approaches, such as temperature variation, into M estimators.