Coral Sea Marine Protected Areas: Our Gift to Asian Fishermen

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a current fad in marine resource management. Where renewable resources are over-exploited, some form of restriction is desirable. MPAs are but one of a range of restrictive measures that may be employed. Whether they offer any advantage or disadvantage to closed seasons, catch limits, limited licensing or other restrictions has not been properly assessed. At this time, they have not been found to be an important management tool in any of the world's well-managed fisheries. As one might expect, there is evidence that in heavily exploited regions there are more and bigger fish in protected areas, and some of the protected population will spill over into the immediately adjacent area. However, this spill-over effect has only been noted over a distance of a few hundred metres. In this respect, numerous small reserves might be more effective than fewer larger ones, although this is contrary to the currently popular claim that MPAs need to be much larger.