Fig 1.
top: Location of Gyaros island (Greece basemap reprinted from Kavadas et al., 2012 - https://doi.org/10.12681/mms.324 under a CC BY license, with permission from Stefanos Kavadas-HCMR, original copyright 2004) bottom: aerial view of the island with the deserted prison complex (source: George Stefanou/WWF Greece).
Fig 2.
Substrate types around Gyaros island (sampling locations are depicted in red triangles).
(Greece basemap reprinted from Kavadas et al., 2012 - https://doi.org/10.12681/mms.324 under a CC BY license, with permission from Stefanos Kavadas-HCMR, original copyright 2004).
Table 1.
Geolocations of sampling stations in Gyaros MPA during 2018–2020.
Fig 3.
Sampling on board the F/V ‘Agia Trias’ in Gyaros island during September 2018.
Table 2.
List of species/taxa identified in the experimental fishing trials with nets in Gyaros island (sorted by contribution to total biomass—catch in grams (g) and in number of individuals (Nb)).
Table 3.
Number of species/taxa observed by season and year in the experimental fishing trials with nets in Gyaros island.
Fig 4.
Box-plots of seasonal total species abundance in the five sampling locations around Gyaros island (top: CPUEW in kg/1000m of trammel net; bottom: CPUEN in number of individuals/1000m of trammel net).
Table 4.
Results of an ANOVA test on the effects of Season and Station on biomass (*: significant, at the 0.05 level).
Fig 5.
Biomass estimate for nine common species in the five sampling locations around Gyaros island (top) and among seasons (bottom) (CPUEW in kg/1000m of trammel net).
Fig 6.
Spatially predicted relative abundance (kg of fish/1000 m of trammel net) for Total catch (top), surmullet (mid-left), red porgy (mid-right), common Pandora (bottom-left) and parrotfish (bottom-right) around Gyaros MPA (sampling locations are depicted in black triangles). (Greece basemap reprinted from Kavadas et al., 2012 - https://doi.org/10.12681/mms.324 under a CC BY license, with permission from Stefanos Kavadas-HCMR, original copyright 2004).
Fig 7.
Spatially predicted relative abundance (kg of fish/1000 m of trammel net) for forkbeard (top-left), lesser spotted dogfish (top-right), common cuttlefish (mid-left), common spiny lobster (mid-right) and red scorpionfish (bottom) around Gyaros MPA (sampling locations are depicted in black triangles). (Greece basemap reprinted from Kavadas et al., 2012 - https://doi.org/10.12681/mms.324 under a CC BY license, with permission from Stefanos Kavadas-HCMR, original copyright 2004).
Table 5.
Results of GAM analyses on the effects of substrate, depth, longitude and latitude on the biomass of the most common commercial species observed in Gyaros MPA (**: highly significant; *: significant,—: not significant).
Fig 8.
Similarity of the studied locations in Gyaros MPA, based on catch abundance, demonstrated in a dendrogram derived from hierarchical clustering analysis (top) and in a Non-metric Multi-Dimensional Scaling plot (bottom).
Fig 9.
ABC plots calculated for each sampling site in the Gyaros MPA.
Table 6.
Length statistics for the species observed in Gyaros MPA (in mm).
Species ordered by sample size. Results can be considered meaningful only for the 15 species having a sample size > = 10. (green: no specimens below MLS or L50mat; yellow: less than 50% of specimens below MLS or L50mat; red: more than 50% of specimens below MLS or L50mat).
Table 7.
Results of an ANOVA test on the effects of Season, Year and Station on size of the most common commercial species observed in Gyaros MPA (**: highly significant; *: significant, -: not significant).
Table 8.
Catch composition by major faunistic category in and out the MPA when comparing experimental surveys with commercial fishing catches.
Fig 10.
Means plot of H’ indices in and out the MPA.
Table 9.
Average length (in mm) of the nine most abundant commercial species captured in and out of Gyaros MPA and results of an ANOVA test on the effects of area (In–Out of MPA) on size (**: highly significant; *: significant, n.s.: not significant).
Table 10.
Indicators for assessing MPA status in Gyaros.