  Until recently, the only examples of inverted biomass pyramids have been in
freshwater and marine planktonic communities. In 2002 and 2008 investigators
documented inverted biomass pyramids for nearly pristine coral reef ecosystems
within the NW Hawaiian islands and the Line Islands, where apex predator
abundance comprises up to 85% of the fish biomass. We build a new refuge based
predator-prey model to study the fish biomass structure at coral reefs and
investigate the effect of fishing on biomass pyramids. Utilizing realistic life
history parameters of coral reef fish, our model exhibits a stable inverted
biomass pyramid. Since the predators and prey are not well mixed, our model
does not incorporate homogeneous mixing and the inverted biomass pyramid is a
consequence of the refuge. Understanding predator-prey dynamics in nearly
pristine conditions provides a more realistic historical framework for
comparison with fished reefs. Finally, we show that fishing transforms the
inverted biomass pyramid to be bottom heavy.
