Once the reserves are created, facilitators will work with local government to officially recognize the reserves. After paperwork is finalized, the reserves will need to be monitored and surveilled to avoid illegal fishing, users will need to gather ecological data over time to track progress, and the facilitators need to help implement other viable economic strategies and ensure their success. If feasible, reserves serving as a network should be implemented at relatively the same time to contribute to the success of the network.
In this first phase, facilitators of no-take marine reserves should aim to establish trusted relationships with the local communities and resources users that would likely be impacted from the implementation of a marine reserve. This entails the facilitator assessing the social, financial, and leadership structures to determine what the community needs to motivate creating a reserve. Concurrently, facilitators should gather any necessary baseline data to better populate tools that will help to create the reserve.
Decision Tree
Decision Tree
What are No-take Marine Reserves?
Tropical oceans bring value to people by providing food, oxygen, recreation, fishing, and other ecosystem services. These systems, however, are constantly threatened by human impacts. Faced with climate change, overfishing, pollution, nutrient imbalances, and other declines in the health of marine ecosystems, tropical seas can suffer and deteriorate without protective actions.
For these reasons, marine resource managers and environmental stakeholders increasingly turn towards ecosystem-based approaches to management, including the implementation of fish refuges. In this manual, fish refuges are defined as designated expanses of the sea where species are fully protected from fishing to enhance the management or conservation of marine resources. Fish refuges can help exploited populations increase in abundance, biomass, and size by decreasing fishing mortality. They can also protect habitat and enhance biodiversity.
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Fish refuges can help support not only the protection of marine resources, but studies have also found that successful and robust fish refuges may provide ecosystem resilience to climate change and other environmental threats (McLeod et al., 2009; Bernhardt & Leslie, 2013). Nevertheless, to receive the full array of benefits a fish refuge can provide, the fish refuge must have a scientifically-based design, strong compliance from all users, and enforcement by governing bodies.
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A fish refuge’s implementation process may differ depending on many factors, including: its objectives, the ecological and social context, the involvement of stakeholders, target species, and the effectiveness of management and enforcement (Pendleton et al., 2017). This report outlines what protections fish refuges can provide and compiles the steps and actions needed to properly to design and implement them based on best scientific practices. It assesses all ecological, social, and economic components necessary to consider when implementing fish refuges including necessary steps, tools, outcomes, and limitations of using fish refuges to achieve conservation, financial, and social benefits (Selig and Bruno, 2010; Edgar et al., 2014; Gill et al., 2017).
What can you do?
This website provides guidelines to the process of creating and implementing fish refuges that are efficient and effective. Fish refuges are designated expanses of ocean that fully protect species/habitat from extractive activities and are more globally known as marine reserves (PISCO 2007; KKA, 2018). If designed correctly, studies have shown fish refuges can increase density; biomass; species size; preserve biodiversity and genetic diversity; conserve ecosystems and maintain ecological processes; create sustainability; protect commercially valuable species; replenish depleted stocks; enhance education and research; and provide recreation, tourism, social and economic benefits (Clark, 1996; references within Salm et al., 2000; Halpern, 2003; Sala & Giakoumi 2017).
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For these reasons, fish refuges are gaining global popularity as a management tool. And with thousands of examples around the world, there are a wide-variety of design and implementation strategies for fish refuges (Pendleton et al., 2017). Since different refuges were designed and implemented using different approaches, there is a rich opportunity to learn from the experiences of others and systematize the best practices and design principles.
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To this end, we compiled relevant scientific literature, reports, guidelines, and available tools to synthesize these experiences. We also assessed this process in Quintana Roo, Mexico where an alliance of stakeholders has formed to better organize themselves and enhance the process of fish refuge formation. This report is the physical copy of an online, interactive website that a facilitator (i.e. non-governmental organizations, foundations or other institutions that assist or facilitate the process of creating a fish refuge) can reference to create and implement more effective fish refuges.