Understanding diet and spawning behaviour is critical for developing ecosystem-oriented conservation strategies for saving vulnerable fish species. It allows authorities to target key times and locations for protection, thus helping to balance the economic needs of fisheries with those of ecosystem health in order to achieve long-term, sustainable food security. However, scientific observation of aquatic ecosystems has only been established in recent decades, often resulting in conservation decisions that lack key details of how aquatic ecosystems respond to long-term changes in fisheries exploitation and environmental conditions. Ancient fish bones and teeth offer a solution to this problem: their physical and chemical characteristics reflect specific behaviours and ecosystem dynamics and can thus serve as a record for investigating long-term patterns in order to anticipate how future fish stocks can be sustainably managed.
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