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Marine Reserves - Time for a Global Perspective

Dirk Zeller

Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, VANCOUVER, CANADA

Theme: TH1

Research on marine reserves, be it field research, management evaluations or modelling, has primarily focussed on local or regional scales. My own background falls into the same category, with work done over the last ten years at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef (GBR), on patterns of movement of commercial fishes in relation to marine reserves, using visual census, tagging, freeze branding and ultrasonic telemetry. However, it is time to address overfishing of ecosystems on the scale at which it is happening in our globalized society, that is on a global scale. There is broad consensus that the world community has to deal with massive global fisheries overcapacity, fuelled by direct and indirect subsidies, and enhanced by technology creep in effort and catchability. The results are globally-declining catches, 'fishing down marine food webs', and ecosystem destruction. Increasingly, studies are demonstrating that marine reserves can play a successful role in fisheries management, but clearly need to go hand-in-hand with serious and sustained efforts to reduce overcapacity of all fishing fleets. However, this effort reduction has to be accompanied by the creation of 'insurance policies', in the form of areas that have been, and permanently remain, closed to extractive uses, i.e. marine reserves. Ultimately, this needs to be addressed on a global scale. Currently, tools are being developed that will assist in providing us with options to evaluate a more global approach to this issue. Here, the contribution will take you from the typical localized data-generating investigation to a proposed global approach.