Overall, fish assemblage abundance and richness were significantly
higher at distances of 0 m and 50 m from the reefs than those
assemblages located 300 m apart. Løkkeborg et al. (2002) documented
that gillnet catches of gadoids were overall higher within a
distance of 110–300 m from oil platforms in the North Sea than at
greater distances, but these results cannot be broaden since they
varied largely among fish species, platform type and location, and
seasons, and because concurrent hydroacoustic and trawling appraisals
did not corroborate higher fish abundances near the platforms
(Soldal et al., 2002). Our results also contrast with those of Jordan et
al. (2005), who found a trend of increasing fish abundance and
richness with increased reef distance in South Florida. However,
Jordan et al. (2005) tested, in fact, the degree of isolation between
adjacent reef modules and sets, and the patterns found were related to
a halo of decreasing density of benthic prey items approaching the
reef, as a result of a greater overlap of fish feeding grounds. Therefore,
our study is probably the first to demonstrate and model the
decrement of fish abundance and richness with reef distance, at a
scale from fifty to hundreds of meters.