The Identification, Conservation, and Management of Estuarine and Marine Nurseries for Fish and Invertebrates

N estuarine and marine ecosystems—e.g., seagrass meadows, marshes, and mangrove forests— serve many important functions in coastal waters. Most notably, they have extremely high primary and secondary productivity and support a great abundance and diversity of fish and invertebrates. Because of their effects on the diversity and productivity of macrofauna, these estuarine and marine ecosystems are often referred to as nurseries in numerous papers, textbooks, and government-sponsored reports (Boesch and Turner 1984, NRC 1995, Butler and Jernakoff 1999). Indeed, the role of these nearshore ecosystems as nurseries is an established ecological concept accepted by scientists, conservation groups, managers, and the public