Marine reserves have been widely promoted as conservation and fishery management tools. There are robust demonstrations of conservation benefits, but fishery benefits remain controversial. We show that marine reserves in Florida (United States) and St. Lucia have enhanced adjacent fisheries. Within 5 years of creation, a network of five small reserves in St. Lucia increased adjacent catches of ...

Marine reserves are an effective tool for protecting biodiversity locally, with potential economic benefits including enhancement of local fisheries, increased tourism, and maintenance of ecosystem services. However, fishing communities often fear short-term income losses associated with closures, and thus may oppose marine reserves. Here we review empirical data and develop bioeconomic models ...

Scientific monitoring has recorded only a recent fraction of the oceans' alteration history. This biases our understanding of marine ecosystems. Remote coral reef ecosystems are often considered pristine because of high shark abundance. However, given the long history and global nature of fishing, sharks' vulnerability, and the ecological consequences of shark declines, these states may not be ...

Environmental microorganisms constitute an almost inexhaustible reserve of genetic and functional diversity, accumulated during millions of years of adaptive evolution to various selective pressures. In particular, the extent of microbial biodiversity in marine habitats seems to grow larger as new techniques emerge to measure it. This has resulted in novel and more complex approaches for the sc...

www.pnas.org#otherarticles This article has been cited by other articles: E-mail Alerts . click here at the top right corner of the article or Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article sign up in the box Rights & Permissions www.pnas.org/misc/rightperm.shtml To reproduce this article in part (figures, tables) or in entirety, see: Reprints www.pnas.org/misc/reprints.shtml To ...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) that exclude fishing have been shown repeatedly to enhance the abundance, size, and diversity of species. These benefits, however, mean little to most marine species, because individual protected areas typically are small. To meet the larger-scale conservation challenges facing ocean ecosystems, several nations are expanding the benefits of individual protected are...

Concerns over worldwide declines in marine resources have prompted the search for innovative solutions for their conservation and management, particularly for coral reef ecosystems. Rapid advances in sensor resolution, coupled with image analysis techniques tailored to the unique optical problems of marine environments have enabled the derivation of detailed benthic habitat maps of coral reef h...

Reduced fishing pressure and weak predator-prey interactions within marine reserves can create trophic cascades that increase the number of grazing fishes and reduce the coverage of macroalgae on coral reefs. Here, we show that the impacts of reserves extend beyond trophic cascades and enhance the process of coral recruitment. Increased fish grazing, primarily driven by reduced fishing, was str...

T state of the global oceans is rapidly deteriorating, with dire consequences for marine species (Jackson et al. 2001). Historically,most conservation efforts have focused on terrestrial systems, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that conservation efforts are urgently required for the oceans as well (Myers et al. 1997, Casey and Myers 1998). Recently, significant attention has been given...