Recent episodes of coral bleaching have led to wide-scale loss of reef corals and raised concerns over the effectiveness of existing conservation and management efforts. The 1998 bleaching event was most severe in the western Indian Ocean, where coral declined by up to 90% in some locations. Using fisheries-independent data, we assessed the long-term impacts of this event on fishery target spec...

Seahorses are iconic charismatic species that are often used to 'champion' marine conservation causes around the world. As they are threatened in many countries by over-exploitation and habitat loss, marine protected areas (MPAs) could help with their protection and recovery. MPAs may conserve seahorses through protecting essential habitats and removing fishing pressures. Populations of White's...

Human populations are concentrated along coastal regions worldwide, placing a disproportionate stress on coastal marine ecosystems. Ironically, biogenic habitats may be adversely affected by human activities though they serve to attenuate the impacts of global change on coastal cities. Surprisingly, simple, coastwide indicators of anthropogenic influences in relation to the spatial distribution...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are key tools for combatting the global overexploitation of endangered species. The prevailing paradigm is that MPAs are beneficial in helping to restore ecosystems to more 'natural' conditions. However, MPAs may have unintended negative effects when increasing densities of protected species exert destructive effects on their habitat. Here, we report on severe seag...

The establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly of no-take areas, is often viewed as a conflict between conservation and fishing. Partially protected areas (PPAs) that restrict some extractive uses are often regarded as a balance between biodiversity conservation and socio-economic viability. Few attempts have been made to generalize the ecological effects of PPAs. We synthesiz...

Kinetic energy (KE) spectra derived from global high-resolution atmospheric simulations from the Model for PredictionAcross Scales (MPAS) are presented. The simulations are produced using quasi-uniform global Voronoi horizontal meshes with 3-, 7.5-, and 15-km mean cell spacings. KE spectra from the MPAS simulations compare well with observations and other simulations in the literature and posse...

Current global marine protection targets aim to protect 10-30% of marine habitats within the next 3 to 5 years. However, these targets were adopted without prior assessment of their achievability. Moreover, our ability to monitor progress towards such targets has been constrained by a lack of robust data on marine protected areas (MPAs). Here we present the results of the first explicitly marin...

Cystoseira sensu lato marine forests, which are among the most productive and diverse systems in rocky intertidal subtidal habitats of Mediterranean Sea, experiencing a widespread decline throughout basin due to increasing human pressures. Yet it is still unclear whether Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) may represent effective tools for conservation these important habitat formers their associated...