How did a network of marine protected areas impact adjacent fisheries? Evidence from Australia

Marine-protected areas (MPAs) are an effective means of improving habitat qualityand biodiversity in the world’s oceans. While the advantages of MPAs as a mechanismfor conservation and biodiversity are well established, the potential improvements tofishery performance resulting from a network of MPAs are still being established.Countries around the world have committed to establishing networks of MPAs withintheir waters by 2020, in response to the United Nations Convention on BiologicalDiversity. This, coupled with the increasing global demand for seafood and heavyreliance on fishery resources as a source of economic development for many coastalcommunities, means that an understanding of how these networks can be expected toimpact fishery performance is extremely important. We use a difference-in-differencemodelling approach to isolate the change in the fishery performance associated withthe south-east marine reserve network in Australia. We find no evidence that theeconomic performance of adjacent fisheries was negatively impacted by the network.This lack of impact is likely due to a network design explicitly intended to avoid effortdisplacement in key fisheries, along with fishery management changes intended toremove excess fishing capacity