Conference News

NFCC Consensus Statement on Integrating Marine Reserve Science and Fisheries Management

Download an Adobe PDF version of the statement here, or go to "More" to read the abstract online.
Consensus_Statement.pdf

Objective

The objective of this Consensus Statement is to inform the fishery management, ecological research, and marine protected area management communities of the results of the NFCC Consensus Conference on Integrating Marine Reserve Science and Fisheries Management. The statement provides an objective examination and assessment of the information regarding potential biological, social, and economic consequences of marine reserves, their potential effectiveness as a fishery management tool in the U.S., the methods for integrating their application with existing U.S. fisheries management and how marine reserves might be designed, monitored and evaluated. In addition, the statement addresses sources and magnitudes of uncertainty associated with marine reserves and conventional management approaches, and recommends areas for further study.

Participants

The conference included scientists and policy experts representing the fields of biological oceanography, marine ecology, fish biology, population dynamics, stock assessment, fishery management, fishery economics, and marine environmental law. The conference's seven-member review panel was made up of scientists and policy experts not currently engaged in research or advocacy in the field of marine reserves. The conference's ten-member presentation panel was made up of scientists and policy experts that are currently engaged in research or advocacy in the field of marine reserves. In addition to conference panelists, an audience of about 100 fishers, scientists, and policy makers was observed and contributed comments.

Evidence

The Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea (COMPASS) at Oregon State University conducted the literature search for the planning committee and the consensus conference and prepared an extensive bibliography for the panel and conference audience. COMPASS staff also prepared abstracts and topic syntheses for the panel with relevant citations from the literature.

Consensus Process

The panel, answering predefined questions, developed their conclusions based on the scientific evidence presented in open forum and the scientific literature. The panel composed a draft statement that was summarized and presented to the experts and the audience for comment. Thereafter, the panel resolved conflicting recommendations and released a summary of its revised statement at the end of the conference. The panel finalized the revisions within a few weeks after the conference. The draft statement was made available on the World Wide Web after panel revisions.

Conclusions

Marine reserves should be considered in the broader context of the development of ecosystem-based management in the U.S. From that perspective, marine reserves have clear application for meeting objectives for ecosystem conservation and protection of marine biodiversity in addition to whatever benefits they may have for achieving fishery management objectives. Furthermore, marine reserves are a category of area management options—including less restrictive and less permanent alternatives—that may be used in order to achieve ecosystem- or species-based management objectives.

With regard to fishery effects, many studies of marine reserves and other area closures, most of which are from lower latitudes, have now shown that fishery target species have increased in abundance and expanded age structure within the closed area in a preponderance of cases (the so-called “reserve effect.”). This is particularly the case where the resource species are significantly overfished. Evidence for effects outside closed areas, either by movement of adults across the reserve boundaries (“spillover”) or larval “export” is more limited and effects on stocks within larger regions can only be deduced by models at this point. This is because of the limited size of existing reserves and inherent difficulties in measuring and interpreting such broader effects. In general, knowledge is sufficient to proceed with the design and evaluation of marine reserves and other marine protected areas and their incorporation into regional ecosystem-based management. More sophisticated modeling and analysis is required for better understanding of spatial movement rates, export of reproductive products, and adaptations by fishers.

Marine reserves clearly offer some advantages for simultaneously incorporating habitat protection and maintenance of ecosystem structure and function within the protected area. They may offer some advantages for multi-species management and as a hedge against environmental surprise or management failure.

Marine reserves are most likely to be an effective management tool for relatively sedentary species with broad larval dispersal, which are recruitment limited, and for mobile species with high site fidelity. They may also be effective for protecting rare habitats vulnerable to human disruption or in protecting aggregations of animals (e.g., when spawning), when exploited populations have been severely depleted, or where bycatch is high. Closed areas may also be useful in achieving broad demographic representation in spawning populations if large animals have limited movement potential relative to reserve boundaries, and when they can maintain populations of highly fecund, older females with strong reproductive potential. They may be more feasible to implement either when reduced yields have already restricted fishing activities and other management measures have been ineffective or when they address special needs within otherwise productive regions.

Marine reserves and other protected areas should be integrated with existing and emerging management measures as part of a coherent ecosystem-based approach to management of commercial and recreational fisheries and should not be simply layered over existing regulations. Careful consideration of the effects on allocation of resources among users, displacement of fishing activity, the requirements for surveys and stock assessment, and the costs of monitoring and enforcement should be made in considering protected area options and design.

The Panel found it difficult to limit its considerations to marine reserves as strictly defined, i.e. areas permanently protected from all extractive activities. We found that management actions need to be openly evaluated against stated goals and where goals are not being met changes in management must at least be considered. The design requirements for marine reserves depend heavily on the environmental context and specific management goals, including the overriding goal of sustainability and high yields of economically important species. Robust experimental design will be critical in order to determine the effects of displaced fishing pressures and enhancement effects on populations outside of reserves in before-after-control-impact assessments.

We have been hampered in evaluating the use of marine reserves as a tool for fishery management by the lack of experiments explicitly designed to address reserve effects on fisheries. These explicit experiments are urgently needed. There are numerous uncertainties associated with our understanding both of important biological and socioeconomic processes and with monitoring, analysis, prediction, and implementation. Some important uncertainties for marine reserves include the degree of effective dispersion and reproductive seeding and the ability to resolve spatial and temporal interactions in monitoring and modeling.

Further study is required on several key issues if closed areas are to assume a more important role in ecosystem approaches to fisheries management and biodiversity protection. These include high quality, synthetic bottom mapping with which to define vulnerable habitats that closed areas might best protect; study of dispersal rates; synthesis of effects of closures in northern temperate and boreal systems.

Many authors have speculated that marine reserves offer more precaution against management and scientific uncertainty than traditional measures. At this point, this is an assertion, and no studies using common definitions and metrics of precaution have been conducted. Given the importance of this issue, there is a need to conduct such work, applying biology and social science, particularly as it relates to findings from existing marine closures.