Letters from Readers
[The letters below are in response to an article in last month’s MPA News, “Results from the Reader Challenge: Which MPA is the Oldest?” The article named the Royal National Park, in New South Wales, Australia, as the oldest marine protected area in...
Notes and News
Correction Last month’s issue (MPA News 3:6) incorrectly reported the date by which a draft operations plan for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve would be available for public comment. The draft operations plan is expected to be...
The Spillover Effect: What Do the Reserves in St. Lucia and Cape Canaveral Tell Us?
One of the most difficult scientific and political questions in MPA planning is that of whether no-take marine reserves can serve to increase fish catches in surrounding fished areas. This effect — achieved when larval or adult fish exit a reserve — often...
Putting No-Take Marine Reserves in Perspective
By Mark Tupper, University of Guam
Many scientists agree that tropical fisheries in developing island nations, such as St. Lucia, stand to gain the most from no-take marine reserves. Many of these island fisheries are seriously overexploited and have little or no management of their reef fish stocks. In such cases, where no-take marine reserves are established they serve as the primary (in some cases sole) controls of catch and effort. It seems obvious that any management regime will produce increased yields over no management at all, and for developing tropical nations with several hundred or more species of reef fish, no-take marine reserves might be much easier to enforce than a complex set of catch limits, size limits, and gear restrictions. However, the St. Lucia example is specific to coral reef fisheries and does not prove the global utility of no-take marine reserves to fisheries.