We model the effect of a no-take reserve in a marine fishery management area, such as on a coral reef. Implicitly, eggs and larvae are mobile but adults are not; and there is open access fishing outside the reserve. A reserve is found to increase equilibrium catch if the prior ratio of stock to carrying capacity is less than a half, and the catch-maximising reserve proportion rises towards a ha...

Artificial reefs in marine protected areas provide additional habitat for biodiversity viewing, and therefore may offer an innovative management solution for managing for coral reef recovery and resilience. Marine park user fees can generate revenue to help manage and maintain natural and artificial reefs. Using a stated preference survey, this study investigates the present consumer surplus as...

Marine reserves are an increasingly important tool for the management of marine ecosystems around the world. However, the effects of proposed marine reserve configurations on sustainability and yield of populations are typically not estimated because of the computational intensity of direct simulation and uncertainty in larval dispersal and density-dependent recruitment. Here we develop a metho...

Movement of individuals is a critical factor determining the effectiveness of reserve networks. Marine reserves have historically been used for the management of species that are sedentary as adults, and, therefore, larval dispersal has been a major focus of marine-reserve research. The push to use marine reserves for managing pelagic and demersal species poses significant questions regarding t...

Genetic analyses of marine population structure often find only slight geographic differentiation in species with high dispersal potential. Interpreting the significance of this slight genetic signal has been difficult because even mild genetic structure implies very limited demographic exchange between populations, but slight differentiation could also be due to sampling error. Examination of ...

www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America T number of marine reserves is growing worldwide (Wood et al. 2008), so it is prudent to consider how to assess whether such reserves achieve their goals. The stated goals of marine reserves vary widely, but fundamentally all reserves are designed to achieve some combination of preserving biodiversity and supporting sustainable fish...

Networks of no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) have been widely advocated for the conservation of marine biodiversity. But for MPA networks to be successful in protecting marine populations, individual MPAs must be self-sustaining or adequately connected to other MPAs via dispersal. For marine species with a dispersive larval stage, populations within MPAs require either the return of settle...

We studied the white sea bream (Diplodus sargus), a protandrous hermaphroditic fish, in two protected and unprotected areas in southwestern France. We observed a significant difference in the demographic structure between the two areas. Females were present in two different age distributions inside and outside the marine reserve with younger females outside. This suggests plasticity in the age ...

To help manage the fluctuations inherent in fish populations scientists have argued for both an ecosystem approach to management and the greater use of marine reserves. Support for reserves includes empirical evidence that they can raise the spawning biomass and mean size of exploited populations, increase the abundance of species and, relative to reference sites, raise population density, biom...