There is a growing focus around the world on marine spatial planning, including spatial fisheries management. Some spatial management approaches are quite blunt, as when marine protected areas (MPAs) are established to restrict fishing in specific locations. Other management tools, such as zoning or spatial user rights, will affect the distribution of fishing effort in a more nuanced manner. Considerable research has focused on the ability of MPAs to increase fishery returns, but the potential for the broader class of spatial management approaches to outperform MPAs has received far less attention. We use bioeconomic models of seven nearshore fisheries in Southern California to explore the value of optimized spatial management in which the distribution of fishing is chosen to maximize profits. We show that fully optimized spatial management can substantially increase fishery profits relative to optimal nonspatial management but that the magnitude of this increase depends on characteristics of the fishing fleet and target species. Strategically placed MPAs can also increase profits substantially compared with nonspatial management, particularly if fishing costs are low, although profit increases available through optimal MPA-based management are roughly half those from fully optimized spatial management. However, if the same total area is protected by randomly placing MPAs, starkly contrasting results emerge: most random MPA designs reduce expected profits. The high value of spatial management estimated here supports continued interest in spatially explicit fisheries regulations but emphasizes that predicted increases in profits can only be achieved if the fishery is well understood and the regulations are strategically designed.ecological modeling | reserve network design | spatial ecology S patially explicit fisheries management has garnered considerable attention in recent years, and this trend is likely to increase as more focus is placed on marine spatial planning (1, 2). Some forms of spatial management simply prohibit fishing in certain locations, using tools such as no-take marine protected areas (MPAs). In other cases, regulations may have a more nuanced effect on the spatial pattern of fishing. Examples of these more flexible approaches include spatial zoning of fleet access (3), spatially localized gear restrictions (4, 5), and spatially explicit catch quotas (6). In addition to regulation-based approaches, spatial user rights can also affect the distribution of fishing effort (7). These varied tools have all been suggested to improve fisheries outcomes by changing the spatial pattern of harvesting. Such spatial management can take advantage of heterogeneity in the seascape by protecting populations that are key sources of larvae (8) or by tuning harvest regulations in response to local life-history parameters (9).Spatial management is not without its challenges. Spatial approaches often require or at least benefit from spatially explicit data about the environment, biology, and fishery (e.g., ref. 10)...