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Science 30 November 2001:
Vol. 294. no. 5548, pp. 1920 - 1923
DOI: 10.1126/science.294.5548.1920
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Reports

Effects of Marine Reserves on Adjacent Fisheries

Callum M. Roberts,12* James A. Bohnsack,3 Fiona Gell,2 Julie P. Hawkins,2 Renata Goodridge4

Marine reserves have been widely promoted as conservation and fishery management tools. There are robust demonstrations of conservation benefits, but fishery benefits remain controversial. We show that marine reserves in Florida (United States) and St. Lucia have enhanced adjacent fisheries. Within 5 years of creation, a network of five small reserves in St. Lucia increased adjacent catches of artisanal fishers by between 46 and 90%, depending on the type of gear the fishers used. In Florida, reserve zones in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge have supplied increasing numbers of world record-sized fish to adjacent recreational fisheries since the 1970s. Our study confirms theoretical predictions that marine reserves can play a key role in supporting fisheries.

1 Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
2 Environment Department, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
3 Southeast Fisheries Science Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, 75 Virginia Beach Drive, Miami, FL 33149, USA.
4 Department of Marine Resource and Environmental Management, Faculty of Natural Science, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cr10{at}york.ac.uk

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