Modelling the impacts of marine protected areas for mobile exploited fish populations and their fisheries: what we recently learnt and where we should be going

Abstract

-Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly being considered and used for the management of fisheries targeting mobile fish populations. Here, the recent modelling literature on MPA effects for mobile fish populations and their fisheries is reviewed. Modelling studies conducted since 2011 have filled a considerable number of knowledge gaps on the impacts of MPAs for species exhibiting home-range behaviour, nomadic movements or behavioural polymorphism, and on the effects of "targeted MPAs", which aim to protect relatively small areas where migratory fishes spend an inordinate fraction of time or are highly vulnerable to fishing (e.g., nursery or spawning zones). Also, in recent years, two studies investigated the consequences of MPAs targeting highly migratory (tuna-like) fish populations for the first time in the history of MPA modelling. Recent modelling studies found that MPAs aimed at protecting mobile species may have positive conservation effects under a relatively wide range of situations, but may generate long-term fisheries benefits only under a very limited set of conditions. In particular, MPAs were not found to be beneficial for the fisheries targeting highly migratory populations. Strategies producing both conservation and fisheries benefits were identified, which depend on fish movement patterns and numerous aspects of fish life history and fisheries dynamics. However, in view of the diversity of fish movement patterns in MPA systems and current dynamics in resource management, it is clear that additional modelling work is needed to fully understand how protected areas affect mobile fish populations and their fisheries and to be able to implement pertinent MPAs. In particular, future modelling studies should systematically assess the effects of MPAs in relation to other management tools to find strategies that are most effective in meeting management objectives, and explore the impacts of "dynamic" MPAs that follow highly migratory fish populations in space and time.

Assisting Ecosystem‐Based Fisheries Management Efforts Using a Comprehensive Survey Database, a Large Environmental Database, and Generalized Additive Models

“…The spatial distribution patterns of snappers–groupers (i.e., the group formed by Red Snapper, Gag, and Red Grouper) predicted in this study suggest that the hotspots of juveniles of snappers–groupers are distinct from the hotspots of their adult congeners (Figure ); the hotpots of juveniles of snappers–groupers are mainly found in the southern WFS, in waters shallower than 60 m, whereas the hotspots of adults are primarily found south of Apalachicola where depth is greater than 60 m. This result has important implications for future MPA planning in the WFS region, because it suggests that MPAs designed to protect hotspots of adults of snappers and groupers would offer virtually no protection to their juvenile congeners; this could have negative consequences for snapper–grouper populations and their fisheries if the fishing effort that used to be exerted on adult fish was redistributed to hotspots of juvenile snappers and groupers (Edwards and Plagányi ; Grüss ).…”

“…), which seek to find MPA configurations that yield large conservation benefits without significantly affecting fisheries profitability. The predictions of statistical habitat models can also be employed to predict hotspots of juveniles and adults of economically important species, and this information can be used in spatially explicit simulation models to investigate the potential effectiveness of MPAs protecting preferentially juveniles or adults (Grüss ).…”

Residency and reproductive status of yellowfin tuna in a proposed large‐scale pelagic marine protected area

“…Species such as tuna, turtles, sharks, and billfish are capable of migrations over scales that dwarf even the largest marine reserves, often associating with dynamic habitats that do not lend themselves to protection within static MPAs (Dueri & Maury, 2013;Dunne, Polunin, Sand, & Johnson, 2014;Kaplan et al, 2014;Lascelles et al, 2014). MPAs that incorporate the entire geographic ranges of such species are likely to be impractically large, in terms of enforcement and management, and politically unachievable (Dueri & Maury, 2013;Grüss, 2014). Nevertheless, conservation objectives could still be achieved using targeted MPAs to protect key areas used by these species, such as spawning grounds, foraging aggregations, and migration corridors (Grüss, 2014;Hooker et al, 2011).…”

“…MPAs that incorporate the entire geographic ranges of such species are likely to be impractically large, in terms of enforcement and management, and politically unachievable (Dueri & Maury, ; Grüss, ). Nevertheless, conservation objectives could still be achieved using targeted MPAs to protect key areas used by these species, such as spawning grounds, foraging aggregations, and migration corridors (Grüss, ; Hooker et al, ). Identifying such habitats is therefore of critical importance for MPA design and evaluation (Game et al, ).…”

North East Atlantic vs. Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas as Fisheries Management Tool

“…Other models incorporate movement patterns-migration, ontogenetic movements, etc. (e.g., as those reviewed by Grüss, 2014).…”