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Table of Contents

T he Spillover Effect:What Do the Reserves inSt. Lucia and CapeCanaveral T ell Us?..........1

Putting No-Take MarineReserves in Perspective .. 2

Special Section: In sightson M PAs and Ind igenousPeoples Part Two ....... 3

Results from the ReaderChallenge: Which MPA ithe Oldest? .................... 5

Notes and News ........... 6

continued on page 2

International N ews and Analysis on Marine Protected Areas Vol. 3, N o. 6 D ec. 2001/Jan. 2002

The Spillover Effect: What Do the Reserves in St. Lucia and Cape

Canaveral Tell Us?

One of the most difficult scientific and politicalquestions in MPA planning is that of whether no-takemarine reserves can serve to increase fish catches insurround ing fished areas. T his effect achieved whenlarval or adult fish exit a reserve often becomes acentral issue bo th for reserve planners and for stakehold-ers affected by pending closures, particularly fishermen.

When future spillover of fish out of a reserve isassumed, support for a reserve can be high amongfishermen. But with few real-life demonstrat ions of thespillover effect existing in the scientific literature, howsure can planners and stakeholders be that it will happen?

The authors of a paper published in Science magazineon November 30 say that two sites they have studiedshow the spillover effect is real, and that reserves canplay a key role in support ing fisheries. Lead authorCallum Roberts of the University of York (UK) hopesthe findings will help remove a major logjam in thedebate. (Co-aut hors on the paper included Fiona Gell

and Julie Hawkins, both of the University of York; JimBohnsack of the US National Marine Fisheries Service;

Dear subscriber:

This issue of MPA Newscovers the months ofDecember 2001 andJanuary 2002, allowingour staff a year-endholiday. In February, ourregular m onth ly deliverywill resume.

On behalf of the staff and

editorial board of MPANews, I wish you the bestfor the new year. Pleaselet us know what you areworking on in your corneof the world. O ur e-mailaddress is [email protected] .

John B. D avisEditor

and Renata Goodridge of the University of the WestInd ies [Barbados].)

The two reserves are the Soufrire Marine ManagementArea (SMMA) on the Caribbean island nation of St.Lucia and the Merritt Island N ational WildlifeRefuge (MINWR) at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The SMMA, a zoned MPA that includes a network of

five no-take areas, was designated in 1995 to rehabilitatethe local reef fishery. Th e no-take areas constitu te 35%of the p revious local fishing grounds; in total, th eSMM A encompasses 11 km of coastline. From 1995 to1998, according to t he Science paper, fish biomass in theno-take zones tripled while biomass in t he adjacentfished areas doubled. (Roberts told MPA News thatrecent , un published d ata show even greater increases,with a quadrupling of biomass in the no-take zones anda tripling of biomass in the fished areas.) Wh ile totalfishing effort remained stable, the mean total catch pertrip by fishermen rose by at least 46% . T he papersauthors know of no evidence for similar fishery or stock

improvements in nearby islands.The MINWR encompasses two areas of estuarinehabitat that have been closed to pub lic access and allfishing since 1962, for security of an adjacent rocketlaunch site. T he two areas total 40 km 2. In recentyears, the adjacent fished areas have become a hotspotfor catches of record-sized game fish, particularly reddrum , black drum, and spotted seatrout. World- andstate-record catches of these three species have beenconcentrated in the authors study area, which extendsroughly 100 km n orth and 100 km south of the no-takezones an area equivalent to 13% of the states

coastline. Since 1985, for example, most Florida-recordred and black drum have come from this study area,despite the fact that similar, suitable estuarine habitatfor these fish exists throughout the state.

What can we learn from this?

Both of the cases described in the Science paper involverelatively small-scale reserves and fisheries. I th ink wemake a strong case that reserves will work at these scalesin coastal waters, said Roberts in an interview.

The spillover effect, in brief

Roberts et al. in their Science article describe thebasis for the spillover effect as such:

Because reserves contain more and larger fish,protected populations can potentially producemany times more offspring than can exploitedpopulations. In som e cases, studies have estimated

order-of-magnitude differences in egg production.Increased egg output is predicted to supply adjacentfisheries through export of offspring on oceancurrents. In addition , as protected stocks build up,reserves are predicted to supply local fisheriesthrough density-dependent spillover of juvenilesand adults into fishing grounds.

Excerpted from Roberts, C.M., Bohnsack, J.A., Gell, F.,

H awkins, J.P., & Good ridge, R. Effects of marine

reserves on adjacent fisheries. Science, 294, 1920-1923

(2001).


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H e suggests, however, that reserves may work just aswell across a wide spectrum of scales, geographicallocation s, and fisheries. Indu strial fisheries in cont i-nental-shelf and h igh-seas waters are in deep t rouble,he said. Many scientists believe that marine reservescould th row such fisheries a lifeline. O ur study does notmake that case alone. But it does establish that the

theory is sound as to how reserves will benefit fisheries.H e says the next step is to perform large-scale demon-strations of reserve benefits to industrial fisheries.

Roberts says that comparisons of marine reserves tomore conventional fishery management t ools (e.g., gearrestrictions) should be broader than simply measuring

Recovery ofSoufrire afterHurricane Lenny

The Soufrire MarineManagement Area(SMMA), featured in th eScience magazine article by

Roberts et al., was hithard by H urricane Lennyin late 1999, destroying asmuch as 80% of the coralcover in some areas of thepark. Wh en MPA N ewsprofiled th e SMM Aimm ediately afterward,Manager Kai Wulf wasconcerned about earlydamage assessments, whichshowed a severe loss ofmarine life. I dont

know wh ere the fish havegone, he said. (MPANews 1:4)

Two years later, asindicated by data from theScience article, most of thefish have come back.The SMMA has sur-vived, both physically andas an institution, saidWulf. Although someareas of the park still show

little revival in terms ofcoral cover, oth er spots arein the midst of a rapidrecovery. Wulf is nowconsidering adjusting theboundaries of no-takezones within the SMM Ato account for this: one ofthe few places, forexample, where healthystocks of one coral can befound is in a heavilyfished multipurpose zone.

I am afraid th at thedropping of fish traps coulddestroy these few remain-ing colonies, said Wulf.

For more information

Kai Wulf, P.O. Box 305, 3

Bay Street, Soufrire, St.

Lucia. Tel: +1 758 459 5500;

E-mail: [email protected].

Many scientists agree that tropical fisheries in develop-ing island nations, such as St. Lucia, stand to gain themost from n o-take marine reserves. Many of theseisland fisheries are seriously overexploited and have littleor no management of their reef fish stocks. In suchcases, where no-take marine reserves are established theyserve as the primary (in some cases sole) controls ofcatch and effort. It seems obvious that any manage-

ment regime will produce increased yields over nomanagement at all, and for developing tropical nationswith several hundred or more species of reef fish, no-take m arine reserves might be m uch easier to enforcethan a complex set of catch limits, size limits, and gearrestrictions. H owever, the St. Lucia example is specificto coral reef fisheries and does not prove the globalutility of no-take marine reserves to fisheries.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commissioninstituted stringent regulations on the recreationalfishery for red and black drum and spotted seatrout inthe late 1980s. Red drum was declared a protectedspecies in 1985 and black d rum was declared a re-stricted species in 1989. Current ly the bag limit for reddrum is one fish per person, with a slot limit of 18-27inches long. T he Merritt Island N WR is producingtroph y-size fish to a small area around Cape Can averal,but what effect have the existing regulations had onmean sizes of red and black drum along the entireFlorida Atlantic coast?

Data collected by the Marine Recreational FisheriesStatistics Survey show that there was a noticeableincrease in the mean length and weight of red drum and

black drum in east Florida over the past 20 years. Forblack drum, the mean weight was less than 1.0 kg formost of the early 1980s but was 2.0 kg in 2000 andagain in 2001. M ean weight of red drum also increasedfrom less than 1.0 kg in the early 1980s to a mean ofaround 2.0 kg th rough the late 1990s and 2000,reaching a mean of 2.2 kg in 2001. T his shows that,whereas an M PA can provide trophy size fish to alimited area outside its boundaries, tr aditional fisheriesmanagement t echniques can result in size increasesacross the entire fishery.

Although the examples discussed by Roberts et al.demonstrate the potential benefits of marine reserves tofisheries, th e fact is that the great majority of th em havenot succeeded in meeting their management objectives,even in tropical coral reef systems. Ind eed it is rathersurprising that the fairly abysmal performance of MPAshas been the basis for a global movement towardsmarine reserves for fisheries management . Currentestimates place the number of paper parks at over 80-90% in some countries, and rich nations have fared nobetter than poor ones. Rather than charging ahead to

create hundreds of new MPAs, it makes sense todetermine (1) whether or not a no-take marine reserve ithe best management strategy for a particular fishery,and (2) how we can better implement and manage cur-rent MPAs so that they reach their stated objectives.


Mark H . T upper, University of Guam Marine Laboratory,

UOG Station, Mangilao, Guam 96923, USA. Tel: +1 671

735 218 5; E-mail: [email protected] .

Putting No-Take Marine Reserves in Perspective

By Mark T upper, Un iversity of Guam

Spillover effectcont inu ed from pa ge 1

against the metr ic of catches of target species. In otherwords, he says, reserves offer benefits, besides spillover,that other management tools do not. The keyaddition al benefit is th at reserves protect habitats fromdamage caused by fishing gear such as trawls, he said.Aside from the important conservation values of suchhabitat protection, theory also predicts that betterquality habitats will reduce the risks associated withpresent fishery m anagement , includ ing serious stock

declines from management failures.

Note from the editor: Mark Tupper, an assistant professor at the University of Guam on the island of Guamin the W estern Pacific, wrote the following perspective piece in response to the

Roberts et al. article in Science. T upper serves as coordinator of the Marine Prot ected Areas Research Group at th eUniversity of Guam Marine Laboratory.


Callum Roberts, Environment D epartment, U niversity of

York, York, YO 10 5D D , United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1904

434066; E-m ail: [email protected].


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In most areas of the world, indigenous peoples can beimportant stakeholders in the planning and manage-

ment o f marine protected areas, often offering detailedecological knowledge of the sea, honed over centuries.Such traditional knowledge, however, is often not fullyrecognized and acted upon by the non-indigenousgovernm ent entities that generally designate M PAs.With governmental recognition of traditional ecologicalknowledge sometimes slow in coming, t he closure ofmarine areas can be an alienating experience forindigenous peoples. As a result, ind igenou s support forthe sites can be low.

For MPA practitioners interested in incorporatingindigenous knowledge, it may be useful to look to

MPAs where the active participation of indigenoussocieties is an in tegral part of plannin g and manage-ment. While the following examples demonstrate whatis now occurring with indigenous involvement inMPAs, there appears no general pattern of institution each case has developed uniquely to the indigenousculture and the area. Yet each is clearly based on respectfor indigenous knowledge.

1. Cayos Miskitos and Franja Costera MarineBiological Reserve, Nicaragua

The Cayos Miskitos and Franja Costera MarineBiological Reserve is located on the northeast coast ofNicaragua, in a territory inhabited largely by theM iskito people. Bounded to the north and east by theCaribbean Sea, t he reserve covers almost 13,000 km 2

and features a range of ecosystems including coral reefs,seagrass pastu res, mangroves, and estu aries. T he reservewas formally designated in 1991 as par t of a cooperativeagreement between 38 M iskito commun ities and th eN icaraguan Ministry of the Environment (M ARENA).An inter-institutional commission composed ofgovernmental and Miskito representatives was set upto plan and manage the reserve.

T he reserves first management plan, crafted in 1995,iden tified several key management issues. Among thesewere the definitive demarcation of communal territories,and regulation of the extraction of marine resources,particularly lobster the focus of an in tensive,mu ltinational fishery in the region. T o aid in addressingthese issues, new local management comm ittees havebeen established to focus on planning and implement-ing key action s such as fishing regulations atselected pilot sites within the reserve.

Special Section: Insights on MPAs and Indigenous Peoples Part Two

(contd.)Last mon th, in PartOne of a two-partstudy, MPA Newsoffered insights fromtwo experts on therelationship betweenindigenous peoples andMPAs. This month,we provide summariesof four MPAs plannedand m anaged with thesignificant involvementof ind igenous peoples.

Cooperation between the central governm ent and theMiskito people has faced its share of challenges.

Repeated attempts in the past century by variousNicaraguan political regimes to impose control over theM iskitos have engendered a lack of t rust of the govern-ment by the tribe. Also, the M iskito communities havetradit ionally controlled access to non-privately ownedland and marine resources in the region, and have beenreluctant to share this power with the government.Nonetheless, the local management committees appearto offer prom ise for improving collaborative m anage-ment.

A detailed description of the role of the Miskito peoplein the reserves management is provided in a case study

in the 2000 WWF/IUCN report Indigenous andT rad itional Peoples and P rotected Areas: Pr inciples,Guidelines and Case Studies, available online in PDFformat at http://wcpa.iucn.org/pubs/publications.html (seebox, next page).

2. Ulunikoro Marine Conservation Area, Fiji

Fijis Ulun ikoro M arine Conservation Area, designatedin 2000, provides a case of bottom-up protection effortsinitiated by a local indigenous community. Consistingof coral reef and m easuring 0.2 km2 in area, th e smallMPA represents the adaptation of traditional Fijianmarine-tenure concepts to modern-day fishing concerns.

Three decades ago, th e waters aroun d the village ofWaisomo supported a thriving fishery. But as catchesand fish size dwindled through the 1980s, the localcommunity grew concerned that the resource wasdisappearing. Convinced by the village headman that amarine protected area would bring back the fish, thevillage then persuaded neighboring communities to joinin pursuing MPA designation from the federalgovernment.

Central to its adoption by the local villages, the modern

concept o f no-take m arine reserves echoes the t radi-tional Pacific-island concept o f tabu, in which localauthorities place areas of the sea off-limits to fishing.The Ulun ikoro MPA is now a no-take area. T he Fijiangovernment has empowered selected villagers to serve asenforcement officials at the site.

An account of the process by which local villagerspursued designation for the MPA is online, at http://www.wwfpacific.org.fj/livingexamplefiji.htm.

Indigenous Involvement Often Influenced by Culture and Regional

Circumstances: Four Examples

continued on page 4


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Special Section: Insights on MPAs and Indigenous Peoples Part Two (contd.)

3. Gwaii Haanas Marine Conservation Area(proposed), Canada

Gwaii Haanas, an archipelago of 138 islands inCanadas Pacific coast province of British C olum bia,has been populated by indigenous peoples for morethan 10,000 years, and is now home to about 2000

mem bers of the Haida people. T he terrestrial GwaiiH aanas National Park/Haida Heritage Site com-posed of the islands but stopping at the high tide line ofeach involves a collaborative management regime toensure equal input from the Haida and the federalgovernm ent in m anaging the regions land-basedresources. A four-m ember Archipelago ManagementBoard, established in 1993 and consisting of tworepresentatives each from th e Cou ncil of the HaidaN ation and the C anadian governm ent (represented bythe Parks C anada agency), oversees all plannin g andmanagement of the archipelago. So far, the board hasreached consensus on every regional matter it has faced.

Now, Parks Canada seeks to designate an MPA theGwaii H aanas M arine C onservation Area in thewaters surrounding the islands, and to establish asimilar collaborative management system to m anage it.

Designation of the MPA, first proposed in 1988, hasencountered a number of obstacles, among them therepeated delay in passage of legislation to establish anation al marine conservation area program. In themeantime, another federal agency the Departmentof Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has jurisdiction overthe areas marine resources. Incidentally, DFO will

retain responsibility for conservation of fish stocks evenif/when the MPA is created for Parks Canada.

The Gwaii Haanas National Park website providesinformation on the current collaborative managementregime for the park, as well as the underlying manage-ment agreement between the H aida comm unity andthe government of Canada: http://parkscan.harbour.com/gwaii/.

4. Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral ReefEcosystem Reserve, USA

In D ecember 2000, U S President C linton designated avast, 340,000-km 2 marine protected area around thecoral-laden Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (MPAN ews 2:6). Clint ons executive order containedmeasures to restrict some activities throughout thereserve, and to establish zones (Reserve PreservationAreas) around certain islands, ato lls and banks where allconsumptive or extractive uses would be prohibited.Following a period of public comment, Clinton issued asecond executive order in January 2001 to revise certainconservation m easures in t he reserve and make perm a-nent the Reserve Preservation Areas.

The US Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is nowworking to draft an operations plan for the reserve(available for public comment in early 2002), inconsultation with state and federal officials and with

recommendations from a reserve advisory coun cil. T he15-m ember council includes th ree Native H awaiianrepresentatives and a citizen-at-large who also happensto be a Native Hawaiian.

Although t he islands in the reserve are largely uninhab-ited, ph ysical rem nants of ancestral p laces, includingburial sites, attest to t he historic use of the islands byN ative Hawaiians. KAHEA (www.kahea.org), a localalliance of Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners andenvironmental activists, was instrumental in laying thegroundwork for the current reserve, through recom-mending specific policies, coordinating t he response of

other environmental groups, and generating publicsupport . KAHEA refers to th e reserve as aPu`uhonua, a place of safety, refuge and recovery.

The official reserve website provides the executiveorders, maps, a record of public comment, and more:http://hawaiireef.noaa.gov/.

Report on indigenous peoples, protected areas available online

Indigenous and Traditional Peoples and ProtectedAreas: Pr inciples, G ui delines an d C ase Stud ies, a 133-page report published by WWF International andthe IUCN World C omm ission on Protected Areas,is available online in PDF format at http://wcpa.iucn.org/pubs/publications.html. English andSpanish versions of the document are available.

T he report provides a set of five principles uponwhich protected area planners should developpartnerships with indigenous peoples. T he principles based upon conclusions from t he Fourth W orldCongress on National Parks and Protected Areas,held in 1992 in Caracas, Venezuela may beadapted to suit particular situations, legislation, andnation al policies.


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Results from the Reader Challenge: Which MPA is the Oldest?

In the past quarter-century, MPAs have experienced asurge in popularity among resource managers lookingfor tools to help protect underwater habitats and otherresources. O f the thousands of M PAs now in existenceworldwide, the large majority of them have beendesignated since the mid-1970s.

But the modern history of marine protected areas beganlong before that. To get a sense of when, and where,the mod ern MPA m ovement began, on e must pinpointwhen the first MPA was designated . This is easier saidthan don e. With t he definition of marine protectedarea often differing from user to user, several MPAsaround th e world have been n amed, in print or on t heweb, as being the first.

Wading into this issue, MPA News challenged readersin September to name the oldest existing marineprotected area in the world, in hopes that we might helpto settle this matter. O ur guidelines were fairly simple:

nominated MPAs must exist currently, and must fit theIUCN definition of marine protected area (see box inright margin).

Evaluating the responses

In sorting through the nominations, the MPA Newsstaff had to make some decisions on what to allow. Th emost critical decision was whether to con sider coastalsites, including th ose without significant areas of opensea. In th e end, we did allow these sites to be consid-ered, so long as they had some intertidal or subtidalmarine component . Restricting consideration to wholly

underwater sites would h ave greatly limited thenom inee pool.

We also had to decide what to do in cases where weknew of older MPAs than ones submitted by readers.Such was the case for South America and Europe. Inthe interest of providing readers with the most accurateinformation we had, we elected to publish the oldestMPAs of which we were aware, even if not nominatedby a reader.

We received more than 30 nom inations in all. T heresults appear on this page and the next, with the oldest-known site featu red first, followed in chronologicalorder by the oldest MPA known from each continent,except Antarctica.

Some of the MPAs seem suspiciously recent t o us. Wasthe oldest European MPA, for example, really desig-nated just 25 years ago? We are print ing this list withthe condition that these are the oldest MPAs of whichwe currently know. If you are aware of older, existingMPAs, we would love to know of them e-mail us [email protected] .

Oldest MPA in the world: Royal National Park,New South Wales, Australia. Designated 1879.

Located on the southern outskirts of Sydney andmanaged by the New South Wales National Parks andWildlife Service (NPWS), Royal National Park consistsof roughly 150 km2 of bushland fronted to the east by

the Pacific O cean. It also includes intertidal terrain inPort H acking, a large tidal inlet. Th e park is describedin some detail on the NPWS website, at http://www.npws.nsw.gov.au/parks/metro/M et032.htm l.

Upon the parks designation in 1879, its regulationsincluded bans on dredging and the removal of sand,rocks, and vegetation. Soon after, prohibition s on theuse of explosives, net-fishing, and the commercialexploitation o f oysters were added. Ian Brown, seniorpolicy officer with the NPWS, notes that the parkauthority in 1893 reported that oysters now cling tothe rocks along the shore, as their threatened extinction

some years ago was averted by the action of the[national park] Trust.

The whole of the Port Hacking estuary, including thoseparts in Royal National Park, is now closed to commer-cial fishing of all kinds. Recreational fishers are allowedto use only hand-held lines. T here is also a prohibitionon taking any mollusks in the intertidal zone adjoiningpart of the park.

Th anks for this nomination go to Ian Brown, N PW S.As nominator of the oldest MPA to our knowledge,at least Brown receives an MPA News tote bag.

Oldest MPA in North America: Breton NationalWildlife Refuge, Louisiana, USA. Designated 1904.

The Breton site consists primarily of mangrove and ismanaged by the US National Fish and Wildlife Service,whose jurisdiction extends 800 feet (244 meters)seaward from mean low tide.

T hanks for this nomination go to M ark Spalding,senior programme officer, Marine and CoastalProgramm e of the United N ations EnvironmentProgramm e - World C onservation M onitoring Centre(UNEP-WCMC), Cambridge, UK.

Oldest MPA in Asia: Matang Forest Reserve, Stateof Perak, Malaysia. Designated 1906.

The Matang Forest Reserve incorporates large man-grove areas. T he reserves purpose is to provide asustainable supply of forest products for the localhuman population while also providing habitat for fish.

Thanks for this nomination, as well, go to MarkSpalding (UN EP-WCM C).

IUCN definitionof marineprotected area

The IUCN defines a

marine protected areaas an area ofintertidal or subtidalterrain, together withits overlying waterand associated flora,fauna, h istorical andcultural features,which h as beenreserved by law orother effective meansto protect part or allof the enclosed

environment.(IUCN 1992)

continued on page 6


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MPA News

Editor-in-Chief

John B. D avis

Editorial BoardChair

David Fluharty, Ph.D.

School of M arine AffairsUniv. of Washington

Patrick Christie, Ph.D .

School of M arine Affairs

Univ. of Washington

Michael Murray

Channel Islands Natl

Marine Sanctuary

Direct correspondence

to: MPA News, School

of Marin e Affairs, Un iv.

of Washington, 3707

Brooklyn Ave. NE,

Seattle, WA 98 105,

USA. Tel: +1 206 685

1582; Fax: +1 206 543

1417; E-mail: mpanews@

u.washington.edu.

............

MPA News is publishedmonthly by Marine AffairsResearch and Education(MARE), a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation, in associa-tion with the School of MarineAffairs, Univ. of Washington.The MPA News staff is solelyresponsible for content.

The MPA News project isfunded in part by the Davidand Lucile PackardFoundation, and by Wash-ington Sea Grant Program,Univ. of Washington,pursuant to National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administra-tion Award No. NA76RG0119.The views expressed hereinare those of the author(s) anddo not necessarily reflect theviews of the PackardFoundation, NOAA or

NOAAs sub-agencies.

For a free subscription, sendan e-mail message [email protected] type "subscribe" onthe subject line, and includeyour name, mailing address,and daytime phone number inthe text of the message.Also, please note whetheryou would like your subscrip-tion to be delivered elec-tronically or in paper format.

......

Oldest MPA in Africa: Tsitsikamma National Park,South Africa. Designated 1964.

Tsitsikamma National Park, on the south coast of SouthAfrica, is a no-take M PA th at includes extensivetem perate reefs. At its present size, the park stretches 80km along the coast and 3 nautical miles seaward.

T hanks for this nomination go to C olin Attwood,principal oceanographer, Marine and Coastal Manage-

ment (an agency of the South African Ministry ofEnvironmental Affairs and Tourism).

Oldest MPA in South America: Archipilago LosRoques National Park, Venezuela. Designated 1972.

Los Roques is an archipelago of 40 small offshoreislands, includ ing on e rocky island and 39 coral cays inan atoll-like formation. T he archipelago is one of thelargest marine national parks in the Caribbean.

Source: Spalding, M.D., Ravilious C., and Green E.P.2001. World Atlas of Coral Reefs. Prepared at the UNEPWorld Con servation M onitoring Centre, U niversity of

California Press, Berkeley, USA.

Oldest MPA in Europe: Underwater Reserve ofMonaco, Monaco. Designated 1976.

Prince Rainier III of Monaco designated this reserve toprovide favorable spawning h abitat for fish. T he reserveincludes bans on fishing, scuba d iving, powerednavigation, and anchoring.

Source: Monaco Government T ourist O ffice, N ewYork City, USA.

The original MPAs

Traditional fishing cultures around the world haveengaged in closure-based practices that havefunctioned to protect marine resources. Perhapsthe best-known example of this is the tabu orkapu concept established by Pacific islandcultures centuries ago. T hroughout Oceania, the

right to fish in a particular area was controlled by aclan, chief, or family, and these contro lling entitiesoften established permanent or temporary tabuareas, in which fishing was off-limits. Dependingon the culture, this prohibition was tied to a beliefsystem, the death of a family member or chief, orsea burial sites.

Wit h westernization of Pacific island cultures, th esetabu areas disappeared. H owever, some cultu resare reinstituting the tabu concept in response tomodern fishing pressure. In Fiji, for example, reefowners established four new tabu areas this past

July. O ne of the areas marks the re-establishmentof a traditional tabu site, around a sacred point onYanuca Island where Fijis first paramount chieftainis said to have descended.


Austin Bowden-Kerby, scientific director, Coral

Gardens Initiative, Foundation for the Peoples of the

South Pacific/Coun terpart International, P.O. Box

14447, Suva, Fiji. E-mail: [email protected].

Notes and News

M ozambique protects Bazaruto coral reefs T hegovernment of Mozambique on November 28 extendedthe boundaries of what had been solely a terrestrial parkon the islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago to include1,400 km2 of the surround ing waters. T he newlynamed Bazaruto Archipelago National Park featurescoral reefs and seagrass beds that support a diversefishery, a strong dive industry, and the largest viabledugong population on the East African coast. The

pending management plan for the expanded parkincludes a zoning system that will establish som e no-take areas, p articularly in coral comm unities; elsewherein t he park, seine and hand-line fisheries by islandresidents will still be allowed.

Three of the five islands of the Bazaruto archipelagowere designated a national park in 1971; the parkcharges tourists a user fee, the revenue of which goestoward conservation efforts and local communities.T he M ozambican government anticipates that the n ew

park designation for the surrounding waters will helpspur more tourism in the area, thus benefiting the localeconomy and the coral reef ecosystem. For moreinformation: Helena Motta, WWF MozambiqueProgramm e Office, PO Box 4560, Maputo, M ozam-bique. Tel: +258 1 301186; E-mail: [email protected].

MPA violation punished, based on satellite data Withevidence based almost exclusively on vessel-trackingdata gathered from a satellite-based vessel monitoringsystem (VM S), the U S federal governm ent has success-fully prosecuted a fishing vessel for repeatedly enteringan area closed to fishing. T he December 5 rulingagainst the Massachusetts-based fishing vessel Indepen-dence and its captain is the first US federal fisheriesprosecution based on VMS data without eyewitnessverification of the offense by enforcement officials. T hescallop vessel was fined US $250,000, and its federalfishing permit was revoked. Th e US N ational MarineFisheries Service uses VM S to assist in m onitorin g com-pliance with closed-area regulations (M PA N ews 2:5).

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Spillover Newsl Mpa26