WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
After roughly a decade without bottom-towed fishing in the study area, 2023–2025 video surveys found heterogeneous sediments supporting juvenile elasmobranchs and distinct epifaunal assemblages including sponges and corals. The authors found current EUNIS sediment categories did not capture those assemblages or fine spatial substrate variation.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
If the reference condition was already simplified before classifications were built, management can formalize a shifted baseline. Habitat taxonomies should remain testable against recovering systems.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
This is one archipelago and an observational recovery context; it does not show that all EUNIS sediment classes are invalid or isolate every effect of fishing closure from environmental differences.
SOURCE
Journal of Applied Ecology
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