The blue paradox: Preemptive overfishing in marine reserves

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Grant R McDermottChristopher J Costello

Abstract

Most large-scale conservation policies are anticipated or announced in advance. This risks the possibility of preemptive resource extraction before the conservation intervention goes into force. We use a high-resolution dataset of satellite-based fishing activity to show that anticipation of an impending no-take marine reserve undermines the policy by triggering an unintended race-to-fish. We study one of the world's largest marine reserves, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), and find that fishers more than doubled their fishing effort once this area was earmarked for eventual protected status. The additional fishing effort resulted in an impoverished starting point for PIPA equivalent to 1.5 y of banned fishing. Extrapolating this behavior globally, we estimate that if other marine reserve announcements were to trigger similar preemptive fishing, this could temporarily increase the share of overextracted fisheries from 65% to 72%. Our findings have implications for general conservation efforts as well as the methods that scientists use to monitor and evaluate policy efficacy.

References

Jun 24, 2006·Science·Camilo MoraRansom A Myers
Feb 7, 2014·Nature·Benjamin S Halpern
Nov 2, 2014·Advances in Marine Biology·Randi RotjanGreg Stone
Mar 12, 2016·Science·Douglas J McCauleyBoris Worm
Apr 2, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Christopher CostelloAmanda Leland
Feb 24, 2018·Science·David A KroodsmaBoris Worm

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Citations

Feb 23, 2020·Nature Communications·John LynhamJuan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez
Mar 21, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Stephen PolaskyJane Lubchenco
Oct 9, 2020·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Timothy D WhiteGiulio A De Leo

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