Effective marine protected areas require a sea change in compliance management

[Extract] Conservationists continue to put forth international milestone goals for preserving the world’s oceans (e.g. 30%; World Parks Congress, 2014) while assuming that this protection will be effective. However, most of the world’s “protected” oceans are plagued with persistent poaching problems and inadequate management capacity that render these reserves ineffective (Kelleher et al., 1995; Mora et al., 2006; Gill et al., 2017). Although the term marine protected area can encompass a range of protections, I focus here on no-take marine reserves (NTMRs), and define effectiveness as the ability to reduce or eliminate fishing mortality within their boundaries. There is no doubt that NTMRs can deliver substantial outcomes when effectively managed to ensure high compliance (Graham et al., 2011; Edgar et al., 2014; Cinner et al., 2016; Gill et al., 2017), but this is more often the exception, rather than the rule. For instance, my colleagues and I recently demonstrated that poaching by recreational fishers in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) is significant, and regularly occurs in areas previously thought to be among the best protected (Bergseth et al. 2017)