Rapid increase in fish numbers follows creation of world’s largest marine reserve network.
June 28th, 2008 | by admin |Rapid increase in fish numbers follows creation of world\’s largest marine reserve network.
No-take marine reserves (NTMRs) are much advocated as a solution to managing marine ecosystems, protecting exploited species and restoring natural states of biodiversity [1,2]. Increasingly, it is becoming clear that effective marine conservation and management at ecosystem and regional scales requires extensive networks of NTMRs [1,2]. The world\’s largest network of such reserves was established on Australia\’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in 2004. Closing such a large area to all fishing has been socially and politically controversial, making it imperative that the effectiveness of this new reserve network be assessed. Here we report evidence, first, that the densities of the major target species of the GBR reef line fisheries were significantly higher in the new NTMRs, compared with fished sites, in just two years; and second, that the positive differences were consistent for multiple marine reserves over an unprecedented spatial scale (>1,000 km).
Russ GR, Cheal AJ, Dolman AM, Emslie MJ, Evans RD, Miller I, Sweatman H, Williamson DH.
School of Marine and Tropical Biology, and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia.