As coral reefs continue to decline globally, it is critical to understand human impacts on their health and function. Recent work on shallow systems indicates coral reef fish biomass can be predicted with greater accuracy than other methods using market gravity. Market gravity combines the distance from a market center with the size or demand of the market to assess how the market influences processes around it. This project incorporates depth as a fixed effect in linear mixed-effect models to better understand if mesophotic coral reefs provide greater protection of coral reef biodiversity from fishing impacts in comparison to shallow coral reefs in three regional case studies. There is a general shift in reef fish biomass across market gravity values at the transition between shallow and mesophotic depths. Further analysis incorporating a wider range of depths is needed to evaluate fishing impacts across the transition from the upper to lower mesophotic. Increased biomass at high market gravity values at deeper depths is shown in the Coral Triangle, where no consistent patterns occur in the Mariana Islands or Mesoamerican Reef. This indicates the utility of market gravity may be dependent on regional conditions.
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