Mangroves are a critical habitat that provide a suite of ecosystem services and support livelihoods. Here we undertook a global analysis to model the density and abundance of 37 commercially important juvenile fish and juvenile and resident invertebrates that are known to extensively use mangroves, by fitting expert-identified drivers of density to fish and invertebrate density data from published field studies. The numerical model predicted high densities throughout parts of Southeast and South Asia, the northern coast of South America, the Red Sea, and the Caribbean and Central America. Application of our model globally estimates that mangroves support an annual abundance of over 700 billion juvenile fish and invertebrates. While abundance at the early life-history stage does not directly equate to potential economic or biomass gains, this estimate indicates the critical role of mangroves globally in supporting fish and fisheries, and further builds the case for their conservation and restoration.

Fisheries managers work with the three components of fisheries—biota, environment, and people—to achieve recreational, stewardship, and socioeconomic goals. Although manipulation of biota and the aquatic environment remains popular (e.g. harvest regulation, protecting or enhancing habitats, and guarding water quality), the human dimension of fisheries must also be considered throughout the fisheries management process. Managers can and should engage fishers in a myriad of ways, from identification of problems to guidance on alternatives, and from measurement of change to evaluation of success. In this chapter, we review common fisheries management goals and objectives; detail information needs stemming from those objectives that can be answered by recreational fishers; suggest areas where increased use or application would more proactively address management objectives; and provide examples of integration of recreational fisher information into the decision-making process. Relevant examples of fisheries management frameworks that require recreational fisher information include the multinational Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean flats fishery; collaborative data collection in United Kingdom sea angling fisheries and Florida Everglades largemouth bass fisheries; co-management of mixed commercial-recreational fisheries in Western Australia; co-operative management of marine fisheries in New Zealand; and co-design of fisheries management plans for UK fisheries