One reason is that overfishing of sharks and related fish has reduced the size of some shark populations.
VOA: special.2009.06.16
"Our attempts to conserve fish communities by regulating the size of fish that can be fished for, and by removing specifically the larger fish, may have had opposite effects to those intended, " she said.
According to Robert Warner, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the survey's researchers, these reserves showed average increases of 91% in the number of fish, 31% in the size of fish and 23% in the number of fish species present.
The prep staff stock the pullout drawers beneath the counters with slabs of marinated meat and fish, serving-size baggies of pasta and crabmeat, steaming bowls of brown rice and mashed potatoes.