Increased Disease Calls for a Cost-Benefits Review of Marine Reserves

Abstract

Marine reserves (or No-Take Zones) are implemented to protect species and habitats, with the aim of restoring a balanced ecosystem. Although the benefits of marine reserves are commonly monitored, there is a lack of insight into the potential detriments of such highly protected waters. High population densities attained within reserves may induce negative impacts such as unfavourable trophic cascades and disease outbreaks. Hence, we investigated the health of lobster populations in the UK’s Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) at Lundy Island. Comparisons were made between the fished, Refuge Zone (RZ) and the un-fished, No-Take Zone (NTZ; marine reserve). We show ostensibly positive effects such as increased lobster abundance and size within the NTZ; however, we also demonstrate apparent negative effects such as increased injury and shell disease. Our findings suggest that robust cost-benefit analyses of marine reserves could improve marine reserve efficacy and subsequent management strategies.

Identification of a Practicable Set of Ecosystem Indicators for Coastal and Marine Ecosystem Services

“…These fi ndings are supported by Wootton et al ( 2012 ) who used similar methods to demonstrate positive effects of the Lundy NTZ on increased lobster abundance and size within the NTZ. • Wootton et al ( 2012 ) demonstrated the apparent negative effects of the NTZ including increased injury and shell disease.…”

“…These fi ndings are supported by Wootton et al ( 2012 ) who used similar methods to demonstrate positive effects of the Lundy NTZ on increased lobster abundance and size within the NTZ. • Wootton et al ( 2012 ) demonstrated the apparent negative effects of the NTZ including increased injury and shell disease. Their study raised concerns about the impact that greater population densities has on disease outbreaks (% with disease), with evidence suggesting that high severity shell disease in the Lundy NTZ was signifi cantly associated with injury, for example injured male lobsters within the NTZ were over three times more likely to possess the high severity form of shell disease.…”

“…Evidence for the site can be found in annual Lundy Field Society reports (dating back to 1947) and in more recent studies which focus specifi cally on the impacts of the NTZ (Hoskin et al 2009 ;Hoskin et al 2011 ;Wootton et al 2012 ;Coleman et al 2013 ). Evidence suggests that there have been changes to the provision of a number of ecosystem services since its designation, and these have included improvements in local shellfi sh stocks (a fi nal ecosystem service), potential spill-over effects to the local fi shery (a good/ benefi t), and improvements to local tourism/nature watching (a good/benefi t) refl ected in on-site recreational diving.…”

Post-harvest recovery dynamics depend on predator specialization in size-selective fisheries

“…Declines after fishery closure, transient or otherwise, might arise from a variety of dynamics, include age-structure-dependent processes given a delay to maturity (White et al 2013), stochastic recruitment (White & RogersBennett 2010, White et al 2013, and diseases with density-dependent spread (McCallum et al 2005, Wootton et al 2012 as well as predation (Micheli et al 2004b) and short-term trophic cascades (Frank et al 2011). Our results suggest that predation-driven transient declines are most likely for specialist predators due to the tight dynamic coupling with prey, predators with collapsed populations due to the greater lag in predation effect, and prey with slower life histories due to the resulting lag time in population dynamics.…”

Are European lobsters (Homarus gammarus) susceptible to infection by a temperate Hematodinium sp.?

“…In the 55 United Kingdom, it is has also been detected in commercially 56 important species such as the European edible crab, C. pagurus 57 (Latrouite et al, 1988;Stentiford et al, 2002). Although detected 58 in the Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus (Field et al, 1992) (Wootton et al, 2011(Wootton et al, , 201267 Davies et al, 2015a,b 2) in which lobsters were monitored every 28 days (see Table S1, 97 Supplementary Materials for further detail of experimental design 98 and sampling regime). Chualáin et al, 2009;Smith et al, 2015), however it has also been 219 recorded in adult crabs in deeper waters (Chualáin, 2010 (Chatton and Poisson, 1931) in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and 227 Hematodinium australis (Hudson and Shields, 1994) that a certain specificity must be met in order for there to be a 247 resulting immune response (e.g.…”