A survey of marine protected areas (MPAs) in 40 countries has found five elements common to the MPAs that best achieve biodiversity conservation goals, but these elements are lacking in many locations.

NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub biologists led international colleagues and recreational divers in a survey of more than 2,000 species at nearly 2,000 sites, to compare fish communities in 87 marine protected areas with fished areas nearby.

Project leader, Professor Graham Edgar of the University of Tasmania (UTAS), said that for most MPAs and nearby fished areas, the survey found little difference in fish communities, indicating many MPAs were not achieving desired conservation outcomes.

Some MPAs, however, had massive numbers of large fishes, including sharks, and had extremely high conservation value. These effective MPAs typically were older, larger, and buffered from fished areas, with no-take policies that were well enforced.

‘These are the kinds of MPAs that we need to create, as well as reshaping existing MPAs that are failing to meet conservation goals,’ Prof Edgar said.

‘An unexpected outcome of our study was that these factors are not individually effective: they need to be compounded, with at least three of the factors, preferably four or five, before significant conservation benefits are generated.

 ‘Very few MPAs worldwide, probably fewer than 10 percent, have four or five of these factors operating, so fail to maximise their potential conservation benefits.’

Prof Edgar said MPA managers should attempt to achieve as many of the five key factors as possible whenever biodiversity conservation is a primary goal.

During the planning stage, this could mean aligning boundaries with habitat features that minimise emigration of species across the boundaries, or increasing the size of no-take zones so that the home ranges of mobile species are encompassed within the total area.

Good enforcement through community support and control of poaching is also important, as is allowing the boundaries and regulations for no-take zones to remain stable through the long term.

Long-term support for volunteer survey

Prof Edgar says the project built on investigations of MPAs across southern Australia during the past 20 years in collaboration with State and Commonwealth management agencies.

He and UTAS colleague Neville Barrett had been surveying fishes, macro-invertebrates and macro-algae along transects inside and outside MPAs to identify ecological changes following restrictions on fishing. Changes typically varied greatly between MPAs, depending on local factors.

‘Ultimately, answers to the most important management questions, such as the optimal size and distribution of MPAs to maximise conservation outcomes, needed a scaling up of research through studies of tens of MPAs through the long term,’ Prof Edgar said.

‘We could see only one viable option to achieve this: by harnessing the goodwill and support of the recreational diving community.’

The Australian Government’s Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities (CERF) funded a pilot study into the value of training enthusiastic volunteer divers in scientific survey techniques to collect underwater data across continental scales. Thus, the Reef Life Survey (RLS) program was born.

RLS divers have now collected abundance data for 2,500 species distributed at more than 1,200 sites around Australia using standardised underwater visual transect methods.

The Marine Hub has provided the statistical expertise to analyse the large systematically-collected RLS datasets and has facilitated the project’s continuity.

‘The value of our RLS marine biodiversity baseline will increase year-by-year as an invaluable reference of change in inshore Australian ecosystems,’ Prof Edgar said. It has the potential to provide long-term trend environmental information, the lack of which has been a criticism of previous State of Environment reports, and will assist managers in Australia and overseas continue to refine the management of MPAs.

Further reading

• G.J. Edgar; R.D. Stuart-Smith; T.J. Willis; S.J. Kininmonth; S.C. Baker; S. Banks; N.S. Barrett; M.A. Becerro; A.T.F. Bernard; J. Berkhout; C.D. Buxton; S.J. Campbell; A.T. Cooper; D. M; S.C. Edgar; G. Fosterra; D.E. Galvan; A.J. Irigoyen; D.J. Kushner; R. Moura; P.E. Parnell; N.T. Shears; G. Soler; E.M.A. Strain; R.J. Thomson. Global conservation outcomes depend on marine protected areas with five key features  Nature (2014)
• World’s largest survey of marine parks shows conservation can be greatly improved, The Conversation, 6 February 2014 (https://theconversation.com/worlds-largest-survey-of-marine-parks-shows-conservation-can-be-greatly-improved-22827)
• To Save Fish and Birds, The New York Times, 15 February 2014 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/to-save-fish-and-birds....)
• www.reeflifesurvey.com
• University of Tasmania Research to Reality "Divers reveal secrets of marine parks and reefs" May 2014

Images

Diver Holmes Reef, Coral Sea, Image: Graham Edgar Reef Life Survey
Hydrolophis occelatus, Port Hedland, Australia. Image: Graham Edgar, Reef Life Survey

Contact

Graham Edgar, University of Tasmania