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Commercial fishing is one of the most important human impacts on the marine benthic environment.
While the direct effects of such an impact on benthic communities appear obvious, the magnitude of the effects has been very difficult to evaluate. Samples along a putative gradient of fishing pressure were collected from 18 sites in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. In addition, there were decreases in the density of deposit feeders, small opportunists, and the ratio of small to large individuals of the infaunal heart urchin, Echinocardium australe. However, changes in the predicted direction in epifaunal density and the total number of individuals were demonstrated. As predicted, decreased fishing pressure significantly increased the density of large epifauna observed in video transects.