negative effects of marine protected areas

TURTLES AND TRANSECTSWe visited the small island of Pulau Nai to lay groundwork for upcoming monitoring efforts in the surrounding Kei Kecil MPA. WWF-Indonesia, in particular, has provided in-country coordination, implementation, and support, and has helped ensure that our monitoring efforts are embedded in national policy-making decisions—particularly in the Sunda Banda seascape. The turtles are old enough to be released, so we carry them out into the water and set them free. Our understanding of the impacts of marine protected areas on marine ecology, however, is skewed towards certain areas and species, said Alex Caveen, author of the book, “The Controversy Over Marine Protected Areas: Science Meets Policy,” who has reviewed the scientific literature on marine protected areas from 1990 to 2010. “In some cases, the better alternative is going to be marine protected areas, in others not.”. By isolating the impacts of MPAs from other extraneous variables, they are able to work toward what Glew terms “an evidence base for conservation,” which, in a field rich with debate about whether or not MPAs are the best strategy for protecting marine ecosystems, could prove to be a vital tool in empowering decision makers. “We need to move away from the polarizing conversations about whether MPAs are 'good' or 'bad,' and instead look at the nuances that can determine how we implement our findings to improve MPA design.”. Editors: Rebecca Kessler, Mike Gaworecki, Willie Shubert The team found that, on average, fish biomass inside the protected areas was 1.6 times higher than in similar unprotected areas. The Raja begins by describing sasi, a traditional resource management system that is common among coastal communities in eastern Indonesia. Our review of the scientific literature retrieved six studies looking at this so-called “spillover,” including a systematic review published in 2016 that summarized results from 85 studies. “Overall, I am satisfied with the research that is being done to see the ecological effectiveness of marine protected areas. This plea to begin establishing marine protected areas gained momentum over decades. Concrete actions are urgently needed to bring true protection and restoration to our ocean. Increased fishing effort outside of MPA Increased travel costs/time to open areas Increased user conflicts in open areas Distributive equity changes; increased disparity Increased occupational risks. Introduction. One of the most powerful and effective methods for protecting fisheries resources and ocean life is the marine protected area (MPA)—a clearly … Having a rigorous, evidence-based approach across more areas of conservation would enable us to see what’s working and what’s not—and, most important, why. Throughout Indonesia, as communities undergo similar changes, there’s a real opportunity for the conservation community to help build a more workable foundation to advance and improve our care of natural resources. “In short, if marine protected areas, or networks of marine protected areas are large enough relative to the range size of species of interest, away from sources of stress that marine protected areas can’t control, such as land-based pollution from rivers, and well-enforced, they provide dramatic benefit towards biodiversity conservation,” Halpern said. The systematic review found evidence of spillover in 80 percent of the studies it considered. Potential issues include: Shifts in Access and Use. Similarly, a 2013 case report found that local communities generally perceived an improvement in economic and environmental benefits from a protected area in the UK. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have attracted much attention as a tool for sustainable fisheries management, restoring depleted fisheries stocks and maintaining ecosystems. Marine protected areas (MPAs) can be effective tools for marine resource management. Was the marine protected area designed to protect a particular species? Moreover, a large chunk of studies are snapshots that measure effects in a single season or year, or at a single location, making their results difficult to generalize. Many people … As with terrestrial protected areas, conservationists and governments are now trying to understand how marine protected areas affect local people and find ways to either improve their lives or at least avoid harm. Our ocean is being flooded with two main types of pollution: chemicals and trash. When considered together, though, most studies suggest that marine protected areas can be good for marine life. For $10/month get World Wildlife in print, 1250 24th Street, N.W. Our understanding of how marine protected areas affect the well-being of local people is currently poor. In the 19th century, scientists vigorously debated the effects of fishing on fish populations and ecosystems. “But I do think we need a lot of emphasis on the human element: to what extent marine protected areas affect human well-being for coastal communities that rely on the oceans for their livelihoods.”, Writer: Shreya Dasgupta, Researcher: Amy Fensome “It’s just that until now, no one has systematically gathered enough data on human well-being, underpinned by an appropriate monitoring design, to build an accurate picture of how MPAs actually affect communities at scale.”. Read the other stories in the series here. A 2010 meta-analysis that combined data from 21 studies reported that some fishing communities perceived an increase in food security after the establishment of marine protected areas. “And there are no other tools for achieving that outcome as effectively.”, But this goal has evolved. The issue compiles 20 scientific studies authored by NOAA scientists and partners covering more than five years' worth of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Our conclusions will help inform local marine management decisions, shape global policy on when and where MPAs can be effective tools for conservation, and influence the design of new MPAs in Indonesia. In the midst of it all, the efficacy of this conservation tool remains heavily debated. Rigorous studies are rare, according to experts, and indeed our literature sample turned up mostly case reports showing varying outcomes that cannot necessarily be attributed to the marine protected areas. If we do not press for marine as well as terrestrial sanctuaries and for regulations over our marine activities, then I ask again, who will?”. “The most critical gap with respect to ecological outcomes, in my opinion, is sufficient data over time to determine how, how quickly and for how long potential ecological effects are occurring,” Halpern said. Jan Piter Renuth is the Raja (King) of Loorlobay, one of the three kings of Kei Besar, a small island in Indonesia’s Eastern Maluku Regency. “Most studies look at two or just a single point in time. But there are many counterexamples and other issues in play — in other words, context matters.”, So, wherever marine protected areas are being promoted as tools for sustainable fisheries, alternative fisheries management options must be considered, Hilborn said. At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, for instance, countries agreed to maintain marine biodiversity by establishing networks of marine protected areas. The remaining seven were meta-analyses that looked at dozens of studies. Sirken was looking for mud crabs, and we were hoping not to encounter any crocodiles. In 2004, the world’s governments adopted their first tangible international target under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): They committed to conserving at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2012. Introduction. Cite this Article: Brian Owens “Canada Gives BP Okay to Explore in Marine Conservation Area,” Hakai Magazine, Nov 27, 2020, accessed December 10th, 2020, https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/canada-gives-bp-okay-to-explore-in-marine-conservation-area/. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been the subject of increasing policy attention during the last few years. But both approaches are limited—neither allows you to accurately isolate the effects of the MPA.”, Jan Piter Renuth, Raja (King) of Loorlobay. “The Walton Family Foundation believes strongly in the power of monitoring and evaluating the conservation work we support, so we can say with conviction whether those actions will lead to the changes in the water—and in people's lives—that we expect. More such rigorous studies can tell us how the impacts of protected areas vary over time and across different communities, experts say, which can then potentially help managers design better marine protected areas. Using a new, more rigorous approach, Glew and Ahmadia are matching MPA sites with suitable control sites outside of the MPAs with an eye toward identifying those unprotected settlements and reefs that are most similar to those inside the monitored and protected areas. If you value this objective and impact-driven journalism, please consider becoming a sustaining member. Mongabay Series: Conservation Effectiveness. Our review isn’t exhaustive and our search terms have focused specifically on certain outcomes, rather than on all the outcomes of marine protected areas that have been studied. Ahmadia’s ecological monitoring occurs in parallel to Glew’s social study, which is being conducted across a similar breadth of geography and time. The future expansion of Ireland’s MPA network could also help us to combat the negative effects … Photo by Greg McFall, NOAA. However, these studies don’t tell us much about whether the establishment of marine protected areas, or some other sociopolitical factor, is really what’s driving these perceptions. But when the coverage remained below 2 percent in 2010, the CBD extended the deadline to 2020. To do this, the team collates preexisting data on key variables—such as exposure to wave action, reef type, distance to market, and social structure—that do, or likely will, influence where MPAs are established. I think it’s useful to keep studying that — how things change with time and protection,” Ban said. The design of marine protected areas (MPAs) has been optimized under assumptions of spatially and temporally homogeneous larval dispersal, despite complex spatiotemporal patterns displayed by ocean currents. "Marine Protected Areas provide added protection for vulnerable or endangered species, habitats and ecosystems, and help to nurture and maintain biodiversity in our oceans and seas. The last two team members collect data from the sea bottom itself, calculating the percentage of coverage by corals, sponges, rocks, and other substrate or living organisms within the reef’s ecosystem. Do marine parks improve fisheries and the well-being of fisheries-dependent communities? A marine protected area (MPA) is an area of sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biodiversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means. Every day, Mongabay reporters bring you news from nature’s frontline. Ahmadia, whose team has been surveying a network of 12 multiple-use marine protected areas in the seascape, told Mongabay that selecting and then monitoring control sites is uncharted territory. But we were able to get enough control sites that it did work.”. Countries are now frenziedly creating more marine protected areas, increasingly very large ones, either out of genuine concern for marine life or to meet international targets. Gabby Ahmadia, WWF senior marine scientist, surveys a reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, “You would assume MPAs are always good for marine species, but we’ve never had solid evidence to really understand the magnitude and variation of ecological outcomes in the protected areas,” she says. “Everyone knows that for MPAs to be sustainable and effective, the resources they protect must continue to benefit the communities that rely on those resources,” Glew says. Indeed, as mentioned, a good body of research suggests that species targeted by fishers often do respond well to protection. But their ambitions don’t end there. We spent two to three days searching for intact reefs but we couldn’t find any. He passes around a brass prayer box containing a coconut kernel, some tea leaves, a small bowl of water, and 17,000 rupiah (the equivalent of about US$1.25). “So then there is the question as to how well they protect biodiversity.”. A majority of scientists accepted the paradigm that the oceans were unlimited. It’s a five-person job. Research has also tended to focus on marine reserves, experts say. And this sort of buy-in from local stakeholders is a crucial component of MPA design: In truth, a good chunk of conservation work is about listening to people and building consensus among different groups, from those at the village level to policymakers. Or there have been some days when we were surveying sites and the reefs were dead. Not only does it make the evaluation of a marine park’s effectiveness hard, but it also can lead to unrealistic expectations of potential benefits for biodiversity, fisheries or human welfare that aren’t always achieved, said Natalie Ban, a marine biologist at the University of Victoria, Canada. “We need a more balanced view of MPAs,” Glew says. He nods in approval as the box is passed from person to person. Thomas Henry Huxley, a pre-eminent Victorian naturalist, famously stated in 1884 that: “… the cod fishery, the herring fishery, the pilchard fishery, the mackerel fishery, and probably all the great sea-fisheries, are inexhaustible; that is t… Two other divers count fish, with one cataloguing species above 14 inches in length and the other compiling a list of smaller fish. However, even with total exclusion of fishing effort, depleted stocks sometimes show little or no recovery over a long time period. But even if there is some spillover, is it enough to compensate for reduced fishing areas with increased fishing pressure and thus provide a net benefit to fishers? Mongabay is a U.S.-based non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform. As with Sirken’s crab fishery, WWF-Indonesia is helping formalize the seaweed-farming group so that they can reach out to the local district for subsidies and other assistance. What evidence exists is mixed, according to experts, and depends on the local context. Behind him, a saltwater crocodile as long as a man is tall lies asleep in a cage; its presence is never explained. In general terms, this means that the area, from the surface to the bottom, is protected from some activities which may have negative effects on the area. (Read more about our methodology and selection criteria here; you can access all 42 studies we reviewed here.) In at least three state government managed marine parks in South Australia, industrial activities have been allowed to expand within their boundaries, each with known pollution problems. “The gold standard would be to conduct surveys both inside the marine protected area before it is established and in comparable unprotected sites, and then continuously monitor both sets of conditions over time to see if the changes are just because of the marine protected area, or something else.”. Benny Yamlean farming seaweed on Nai Island, part of Kei Kecil Marine Protected Area. (Within our sample of 16 studies looking into socioeconomic outcomes, 15 were case reports.). Sunset over Stellwagen Sanctuary. “You can use all your factors and environmental indicators and social criteria to say these would be good control areas, but you can only guess what’ll be underwater,” she said. Critics counter that marine protected areas restrict local communities’ access to their ancestral fishing grounds, make them poorer and often increase conflict between them and people involved in park management or tourism. It’s no small task. The rigor is important, both say, because it creates a real-world experiment that allows Ahmadia, Glew, and their partners to isolate the signature impacts of MPA establishment despite ever-changing social and ecological conditions. Most positive examples come from marine protected areas that are either very small (so the fishers lose only a small amount of their previous fishing area), or from parks located in areas where fish stocks are severely overexploited, said the University of Washington’s Hilborn. “We lost about a quarter of our dataset because we did not find appropriate protected and unprotected matches, but by doing this, we were also more confident about our results,” Gill said. The rigorous scientific approach Gabby, Louise, and their partners bring will allow us to measure and communicate the direct benefits these MPAs have had for marine conservation and human well-being.”. Together, these data yield the quantity and quality of information Glew and Ahmadia need to pair reefs and households inside the MPA with similar “control” reefs and households unaffected by the MPA, providing a critically important baseline against which to measure and anticipate future changes in ecosystems and human well-being. “In developing nations and highly diverse fisheries — as is the case with many coral reef fisheries in tropical countries — traditional fisheries management has not been as effective and marine protected areas are often a much more effective and viable strategy. QUANTIFYING CONSERVATION On our dive, Ahmadia brings along transect tape and a clipboard to show me how reef monitoring is carried out. But achieving this gold standard is tricky, Gabby Ahmadia, a marine biologist with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told Mongabay. Punishments for noncompliance start at a stern telling off, he claims, but escalate with astonishing quickness to capital punishment. They have to be done right in order to work. Our EIN or tax ID is 45-3714703. “Not enough thought is given to the monitoring design when [a] marine park is being established,” David Gill, a marine researcher at George Mason University and visiting scholar at the NGO Conservation International, told Mongabay. “You just need a caveat that while some of what you’re seeing might be attributable to the marine protected areas, you can’t necessarily prove it beyond any doubt,” said the University of Victoria’s Ban. Marine protected areas can benefit marine life, but impacts are uneven By closing off areas of the ocean to fishing and other extractive activities, marine protected areas, especially marine reserves that ban all or most such activities, are expected to help species recover. 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