I am on a listserve for worldwide discussion of Marine Protected Areas (MPA). The group is noticeably pro-MPA and does not tend to favor criticism in my opinion, but I am at times allowed to provide comments from the perspective of the community harmed by MPAs.
What follows is a question posed by a MPA proponent and my response.
MPA community question:
Community member is looking for examples where the implementation of no-fishing (no-take) zones in MPAs first met major opposition from local communities and fisheries, but later support and a positive attitude from the same people and community because the spill-over effect and other positive effects of strict protection became obvious to them.
My reply:
Here in California, the opposite has happened. The fishing community understands better than anyone that California has some of the best fisheries management practices and regulations (with the goal of sustainability) in the world, and the community fought valiantly against the proposed MPA network, which was of course implemented anyway (it was a top-down decision process, painted to look like a bottom-up process in my experience).
The proposed MPA network in California waters claimed to only disallow angler access to 16% of the coastal waters. Anglers saw right through that because the particular 16% included about 60% of the productive fishing areas.
This created an ongoing compaction problem because all fishing pressure became focused on the remaining 40% of the productive areas, which are not sufficient to support the fishing effort.
The angler community to this day is angry and remains strongly opposed to MPAs. I represent the angling community at the state and federal levels.
The question included the spill-over effect. In California, proponents of MPAs made very large promises to the fishing community with regards to anticipated benefits of the spill-over effects of the MPAs.
Now, more than 25 years later, the promises of benefits from spill-over effect have been debunked. It didn’t happen in any meaningful way.
That may be because entire natural hard bottom areas with high relief were included in MPA (MPA advocates were amazingly greedy), so spill-over pathways do not exist.
Furthermore, when manufactured reefing is proposed near an MPA, the MPA advocates tend to want to fight against it because they worry that some fish inside MPAs may choose to move to the new reefs.
The solution I offer to MPA proponents is to be fair to the angling community by first building reefs of equal or greater fishing value, before implementing MPAs in adjacent areas.
Furthermore, help keep anglers/boaters safe by building the new fishing reefs a little closer to harbors.
One more offer of advice: MPAs which extend to beaches or rocky areas, hurt the disadvantaged community because subsistence fishers lose valuable ocean access from where they can feed their hungry children, aged household members and themselves.
Be considerate to subsistence anglers with regulations to allow fishing from the shore.
