Some studies have shown that mahi mahi populations have the ability to withstand intensive harvesting. There are several traits that can help speed up their recovery from overfishing, such as rapid growth rates, reproductive success, and a “low age at maturity” for breeding purposes.
When it comes to the long-term sustainability of populations of fish species, those that can reproduce faster and more often will clearly have an advantage in replacing their depleted numbers, while slower reproducers will struggle to recover. For example, an estimated 100 million sharks are killed each year by fishing, in part due to the demand for shark fins to make shark fin soup. Their low rebound rates to recover their populations make this type of shark overfishing unsustainable.
It is also important to note, as does the Florida Museum of Natural History, that while research has been conducted on mahi mahi populations in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic, their entire range has not been found. yet been studied. But at least for now, the mahi mahi is listed as a species of “least concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and that bodes well for its immediate future.
