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

Abstract

The effectiveness of management initiatives implemented in the context of the European Common Fisheries Policy has been questioned, especially with regard to the Mediterranean. Some of the analyses made to compare the fishing activity and management measures carried out in the North East Atlantic and in the Mediterranean do not take into account some of the differentiating peculiarities of each of these regions. At the same time, they resort to traditional fisheries management measures and do not discuss the role of marine protected areas as a complementary management tool. In this respect, the apparent failure of marine protected areas in the North-East Atlantic compared with the same in the Mediterranean is challenging European fishery scientists. Application of the classical holistic view of ecological succession to the functioning of fishery closures and no-use areas highlights the importance of combining both management regimes to fully satisfy both fishery-and biodiversity-oriented goals. We advocate that an optimal management strategy for designing an MPA to protect biodiversity and sustain fishing yields consists of combining a network of no-use areas (close to their mature state) with fish boxes (buffer zones maintained by fishing disturbance in a relatively early successional stage, where productivity is higher), under a multi-zoning scheme. In this framework, the importance of no-use areas for fisheries is based on several observations: (1) They preserve biological diversity at regional scale, at all levels-specific, habitat/seascape, and also genetic diversity and the structure of populations, allowing natural selection to operate. (2) They permit the natural variability of the system to be differentiated from the effects of regulation and to be integrated in appropriate sampling schemes as controls. (3) They maintain the natural size and age structure of the populations, hence maximizing potential fecundity, allowing biomass export to occur from core to regulated areas, dampening the fluctuations derived from deviations from the theoretical optimal effort in the fishing zone.

Exceptionally high but still growing predatory reef fish biomass after 23 years of protection in a Marine Protected Area

“…The last 4-year period showed a rapid increase of many descriptors of the fish assemblage. Some kind of exploitation of the resources may lead to a fast increase in the growth rate of the assemblages [ 73 – 75 ]. In our study, the fact that after the surveillance was restored the whole community and the trophic groups experienced a rapid increase may be partially due to the exploitation undergone during the poaching events.…”

“…Marine Protected Areas (hereafter MPAs) are spatial management tools for fisheries regulation and biodiversity conservation [ 1 ]. By banning and/or limiting the fisheries activity, they allow the recovery of the species inside their limits, both in terms of biomass and abundance [ 2 , 3 ].…”

Light and Shade in Marine Conservation Across European and Contiguous Seas

“…For instance, while partially protected areas (e.g., fishing boxes) are a common fisheries management tool in north-eastern Atlantic waters, NTZs are more frequent as part of the MPA zonation system in the warmer Mediterranean Sea (Abdulla et al, 2008;Perez-Ruzafa et al, 2017). Large-scale fishing effort limitations are applied in northern Europe to manage few-or single-species stocks in offshore, soft-bottom temperate areas, as opposed to small-scale protection of highly diverse and complex coastal rocky-bottom Mediterranean areas (Perez-Ruzafa et al, 2017). Denmark, on the other hand, follows both tracks adopting restriction for fishery in Natura 2000 sites hosting reefs and bubbling reefs habitats.…”

Detection of protection benefits for predatory fishes depends on census methodology

“…Marine protected areas (MPAs) are recognized as effective tools for the conservation of biodiversity and fisheries management (Pérez-Ruzafa, García-Charton & Marcos, 2017). When effectively designed and managed, MPAs show positive effects on the recovery of the density and biomass of exploited fishes, especially those of large size, located at higher trophic positions, playing key roles in marine ecosystems, and of commercial importance (Mosquera et al, 2000;Côté, Mosquera & Reynolds, 2001;Micheli, Halpern & Botsford, 2004;Guidetti & Sala, 2007;Claudet et al, 2008;Guidetti et al, 2008;Sciberras et al, 2013;Edgar et al, 2014;Guidetti et al, 2014;Hackradt et al, 2014;Rojo, Sánchez-Meca & García-Charton, 2019).…”