DNA evidence shows that marine reserves help to sustain fisheries

EurekAlert: Researchers reporting online on May 24 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology present the first evidence that areas closed to all fishing are helping to sustain valuable Australian fisheries. The international team of scientists applied a forensic DNA profiling approach to track the dispersal pathways of fish larvae throughout a network of marine reserves on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

"Marine reserves have been set aside to create resilient ocean ecosystems and help sustain fisheries, yet there has been little clear evidence that they can provide either," said Hugo Harrison from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University in Australia. "This study provides the first conclusive evidence that larval supply from marine reserves generates important recruitment subsidies to both fished and protected areas."

..."Until now, no one has been able to show that adequately protected reserve networks can make a significant contribution to the replenishment of fished populations," said Geoff Jones, lead author of the study. "The fate of the offspring of fish in the reserves has been a long-standing mystery. Now we can clearly show that the benefits of reserves spread beyond reserve boundaries."...

Photograph by DM289169, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license