Fig. 3: Trade-offs among production and ecosystem metrics.

a Surplus production curve and expected values of ecosystem metrics as a function of biomass. Surplus production curve (black) is the posterior median (and 90% uncertainty intervals) sustainable yield for most common (for categorical variables) and average (for quantitative variables) sampling and environmental conditions. Ecosystem metrics are generalized additive model fits with 95% confidence intervals along the surplus production biomass gradient using metrics that are consistent with the surplus production curve conditions (marginalized for sampling and environmental covariates). Vertical lines represent the median biomass values at MMSY (B_MMSY) and pretty good multispecies yield (B_PGMY,l is the lower bound and B_PGMY,U is the upper bound) for average environmental conditions. Density distributions represent mean fish length (b; n = 1763 individual sites), total fish species richness (c; n = 1753), presence/absence of top predators (d; n = 1763), and parrotfish scraping potential (e; n = 1116), of our sampled reefs open to extraction correcting for sampling effects. Note that (i) color scales in (b–e) are also the scales for the respective colors in (a), and (ii) “(a)” shows the probability of observing top-predators and “e” the density distribution of presence/absence of top predators. See Supplementary Fig. 7 for individual ecosystem metric relationships and distributions along the full range of biomass values. f–i Distribution of ecosystem metrics in reefs open to extraction separated as to whether the reefs were above or below site-specific B_MMSY reference points. Jittered points are individual reef sites. In (b–i) dark colored density plots represent fished reefs with some level of gear or effort restrictions in place, and light-colored density plots represent openly fished reefs. Source data are provided as a Supplementary Data file.