Marine Reserves: A Guide to Science, Design, and Use

A summary of lessons learned.

Case studies from around the world have proven valuable in helping resource managers improve the stewardship of marine resources. The following summary of lessons learned from marine reserves is found in Chapter Eleven, Global Review: Lessons from Around the World.

The Future of Marine Reserves

A sea change is occurring with respect to marine reserve development around the world. The examples highlighted in the global review share much in common with the more detailed case studies presented earlier. Across these jurisdictions, a growing trend is evolving toward successful development of larger individual marine reserves and reserve networks utilizing improved design and public process principles tailored to local situations. These larger reserves and reserve networks provide opportunities to greatly expand and document reserve benefits related to both ecosystem protection and fisheries conservation.

In the U.S., development of marine reserves off the Florida Keys, including the larger Tortugas Ecological Reserve; the more extensive network of reserves off of California’s Channel Islands; and of several remote island marine reserves in the Caribbean and Central Pacific are especially noteworthy and indicative of this trend. Ongoing efforts to develop a strong network of marine reserves surrounding the remote, undeveloped Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and set within a marine protected area covering a very large spatial scale; afford a tremendous opportunity to advance this trend to a new level. Among other more developed countries, the continued expansion of New Zealand’s national network of marine reserves and the more recent and extensive advances in development of marine reserve networks in Australia likely lie at the leading edge of marine reserve progress. Similarly, developing national marine reserve networks in the Bahamas and in Belize are representative of the forefront of marine reserve progress among less developed countries.

Maximizing the conservation and other benefits afforded by potentially larger marine reserves and reserve networks will require applying the lessons learned to date around the world and adapting them as appropriate to these new opportunities. The following lessons summarized here are among those worthy of application elsewhere:

• Even as human alteration of marine ecosystems accelerates outside their boundaries, marine reserves of all sizes are proving effective in stemming impacts, reversing declines, and protecting resources from degradation within their boundaries.
  
• Larger reserves and reserve networks provide a greater potential for a broad range of ecosystem level benefits than smaller ones, especially extending fishery and other benefits beyond their borders, but even smaller individual ones can contribute significantly with respect to some benefits.
  
• Longer time frames, at least 20-30 years, are necessary to maximize and see the full range of marine reserves benefits, though some reserve benefits are often seen fairly quickly, within a few years.
  
• Public support and community involvement, involving both fishers and other interests, are normally essential to reserve success, especially in populated areas.
  
• Lively and vigorous discussion regarding marine reserve issues is often beneficial. Attempts to stifle debate often backfire, though tools for keeping it civil, respectful and constructive are warranted. Good, open public process is highly desirable and effective.
  
• Marine reserve benefits involve much more than just fisheries and must be considered with more in mind.
  
• Strong research and monitoring programs, including natural and social sciences, can be critical to marine reserve success, evaluation, and expansion.
  
• Protecting marine reserves from other forms of human alteration than fishing can also be critical to their success.
  
• Recent marine reserve advances in Australia and New Zealand suggest that sound top-down or national level approaches, policies, and support combined with more localized, on the ground, implementation offer great prospects for success.

Marine reserves will likely remain controversial and contentious in many places and among some stakeholders, despite, and in some cases because of, the considerable progress made to date in many areas with the participation of many stakeholders. In the U.S., there has been some backlash within certain user communities to the successful establishment of marine reserves in the Florida Keys and Channel Islands. Yet, in the long run, the resulting public debate on marine reserves will likely be a net benefit, and that recent progress on marine reserve science, design, and use will continue and likely accelerate further. Attempts to stifle or avoid such debate often backfire, though tools for keeping it civil, respectful, and constructive are warranted and discussed in the book. A lively and vigorous discussion of marine reserve issues among many constituencies, across multiple public sectors, and at a variety of levels is highly desirable, much needed, and likely essential to their continued success as a key marine policy tool.

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