Who researched:
\nGraham J. Edgar, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Trevor J. Willis, Stuart Kininmonth, Susan C. Baker, Stuart Banks, Neville S. Barrett, Mikel A. Becerro, Anthony T. F. Bernard, Just Berkhout, Colin D. Buxton, Stuart J. Campbell, Antonia T. Cooper, Marlene Davey, Sophie C. Edgar, G\u00fcnter F\u00f6rsterra, David E. Galv\u00e1n, Alejo J. Irigoyen, David J. Kushner, Rodrigo Moura, P. Ed Parnell, Nick T. Shears, German Soler, Elisabeth M. A. Strain & Russell J. Thomson
\nWhere researched:
\n87 Marine Protected Areas worldwide
\nWhen researched:
\nReceived September 9, 2013
\nAccepted for publication January 13, 2014
\nPublished online February 5, 2014
\nThe five key features:
\nNo take (no fishing), well enforced, old (over 10 years of being an MPA), large (over 100 kilometers squared) and isolated by deep water or sand
\nResearch methods used:
\nUsing underwater survey data from \u201ceffective\u201d MPAs (with four or five of the key features) and predictions based on survey data from fished coasts, the researchers compared effective MPAs to fished areas–total fish biomass, total shark biomass and amount of large fish (larger than 250 mm in total length).
\nWhat they found:
\n59% of the Marine Protected Areas studied had only one or two of the key features needed to make an MPA effective. These ineffective MPAs were ecologically indistinguishable (the fish and shark biomass were equivalent and the number of large fish were equivalent) from the fished coasts studied. However, effective MPAs had twice as many large fish, a five times larger fish biomass and a fourteen times larger shark biomass than the fished areas surveyed.
\nWhat this means\/Why it\u2019s important:
\nConsidering most (59%) MPAs share similar data on fish\/shark biomass with regularly fished areas, more effort and enforcement needs to go into our Marine Protected Areas. It is thought that our oceans have only one third of the total fish biomass than historical levels and if we want to ensure a decent level of marine biodiversity in the future, we need to make sure that our Marine Protected Areas have the five key features presented by these researchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who researched: Graham J. Edgar, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Trevor J. Willis, Stuart Kininmonth, Susan C. Baker, Stuart Banks, Neville S. Barrett, Mikel A. Becerro, Anthony T. F. Bernard, Just Berkhout, Colin D. Buxton, Stuart J. Campbell, Antonia T. Cooper, Marlene Davey, Sophie C. Edgar, G\u00fcnter F\u00f6rsterra, David E. Galv\u00e1n, Alejo J. Irigoyen, David J. Kushner, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}