Marine Protected Areas Archives

Ocean with David Attenborough: The wrong problem and the wrong solution.

July 30, 2025 — When I took driver training in the 1960s, we started by watching a movie called “Signal 30” which was half an hour of people killed and maimed in traffic accidents. It is available on youtube if you are interested. Many of my classmates came away sick to their stomachs from the carnage. There has been a similar audience response to the film, Ocean with David Attenborough. But the reason we were shown Signal 30 wasn’t to convince us to ban automobiles, or never learn to drive, but to understand that we need to be careful when driving and that very bad things can happen if you don’t manage your driving well.

Ocean with David Attenborough is similar. It shows horrific footage of trawling on sensitive habitats, bycatch being shoveled over the side of a boat, dolphins and turtles caught in nets, and sharks hanging on longlines. In other words, it shows the absolute worst aspects of poorly managed or unmanaged fishing. The message is that this is the norm, not that this is the worst. The message is not that we need to carefully manage fishing so these things don’t happen, but that fishing always has unacceptable environmental costs and at least 30% of the oceans needs to be closed to fishing.

I certainly agree that the ocean is under threat in many places, and action is needed. But the film suggests a single solution: no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). However, to prescribe a solution you have to accurately diagnose the threats. While the movie acknowledges concern about global warming on coral reefs, it ignores other aspects of climate change affecting the oceans—the largest threat of all. The film also ignores what is perhaps the biggest threat to kelp forests, sea grasses, salt marshes, and coastal ecosystems: land-based runoff of sediments, pollutants, and near-shore land use in general. MPAs do not reduce those threats at all.

Where overfishing and bycatch are a threat in some places, MPAs are a very poor solution, as they don’t reduce fishing pressure, but instead simply move it outside the MPA boundaries. The real successes in rebuilding fish stocks in the last 50 years have come from fisheries management measures that reduced fleet size, and catches. We have seen rebuilding of bluefin tuna around the world, Atlantic cod has rebuilt in many places, sockeye, pink and chum salmon are at record abundance in the North Pacific — all due to good fisheries management and intact habitat with no contribution from MPAs.

Changes in fishing gear and practices have reduced bycatch of dolphins in tuna fisheries by 98%, and where these methods are applied seabird bycatch by 50-90% , and turtle bycatch by up to 98%. Closing 30% of the ocean would have little impact on bycatch as other areas would get fished harder.

Ocean with David Attenborough argues that bottom trawling should be banned, simply because poorly-managed bottom trawling has the potential to destroy benthic habitat and have high bycatch. But independent scientific evaluation by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Marine Stewardship Council have shown that well-managed bottom trawl fisheries meet high standards of environmental protection and are sustainable. Certainly, benthic impacts of bottom trawling need to be managed and minimized, but this is done well in many places like the U.S., New Zealand, Iceland, and many places in the E.U.

Finally, the film ends with an optimistic note that the oceans can recover and shows wonderful footage of rebounding whale populations. This recovery had nothing to do with MPAs! Instead, traditional fishery management techniques worked. If 30% of the oceans had been closed to whale hunting, the great whales would have simply been harpooned outside the MPAs and we’d likely have no whales today.

I agree with David Attenborough that the oceans need protection, but let us correctly diagnose the threats and prescribe effective solutions.

Dr. Ray Hilborn is Professor of Fisheries Management in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington

As Trump pares back ocean protections, California weighs expanding them

May 5, 2025 — Strands of kelp glow in the dim morning light off California’s Channel Islands as fish and sea lions weave through the golden fronds. It’s a scene of remarkable abundance — the result of more than two decades of protection in one of the state’s oldest marine reserves.

But farther out in the Pacific, life in the vast Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument faces a very different future. The Trump administration has moved to reopen 500,000 square miles (about 1.3 million square kilometers) of previously protected waters there to commercial fishing, in a dramatic rollback of federal ocean protections.

California, meanwhile, may be headed in the opposite direction. As it undertakes its first 10-year review of its marine protected area network, state officials, scientists, tribal leaders and environmental advocates are pushing not just to maintain protections but to expand them.

But expansion proposals have sparked debate among fishermen.

Read the full story at KCRA

Do Marine Protected Areas Really Help Fisheries?

November 22, 2024 — Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are often promoted as tools to conserve fish populations and improve fishing yields. However, a recent study, “When does spillover from marine protected areas indicate benefits to fish abundance and catch?” by Ray Hilborn, Mark Fitchett, John Hampton, and Daniel Ovando, published in the journal Theoretical Ecology, questions whether MPAs consistently benefit fisheries as assumed.

What is Spillover?

“Spillover” refers to the movement of fish or larvae from MPAs into fishing zones, which is thought to enhance fish abundance and catch rates nearby. While gradients in fish density—higher populations near MPA boundaries—are often observed, the study finds that these patterns do not always mean fisheries are improving.

Using computer models and case studies, the authors determined that spillover benefits are most likely in areas where fishing was intense before MPAs were established. In regions with lower fishing pressure, MPAs generally had minimal impact on total fish populations or catches.

Findings of the Study

Fishing Pressure Matters: MPAs are most effective when fishing pressure has been high. In such cases, closing areas can allow fish stocks to recover, increasing overall abundance and sometimes catch rates.
Large MPAs and Migratory Fish: For highly mobile species like tuna, large MPAs, such as the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) in Hawaii, showed limited benefits. The study found little evidence that the PMNM increased tuna populations or catches, as much of the area was lightly fished even before its closure.
Not Always a Fishery Benefit: The presence of a gradient—more fish near MPA borders—does not necessarily indicate increased total fish abundance or improved catches.

Examples Explored

South Africa: MPAs in South Africa demonstrated clear fishery benefits, with increased catches linked to spillover. These areas had been overfished, creating conditions where MPAs could help.
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument: Despite being one of the world’s largest MPAs, the PMNM showed no significant fishery benefits for tuna. The closure displaced fishing effort but did not noticeably increase tuna populations or catches.

Conclusion

Spillover happens when fish or larvae move from protected areas into fishing zones, often leading to higher fish populations near MPA boundaries. While this is commonly assumed to benefit fisheries, the study found that these increases in abundance do not always mean more fish are caught or that total populations grow. Only areas with intense fishing pressure before the MPA’s establishment showed clear benefits to fisheries. For large, open-ocean MPAs, the study found little evidence of positive effects on tuna populations.

Author Affiliations

Ray Hilborn: School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
Mark Fitchett: Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
John Hampton: Pacific Community, Noumea, New Caledonia
Daniel Ovando: Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, La Jolla, California, USA

Biden’s marine sanctuaries come under fire at US congressional hearing

September 23, 2023 — The U.S. government’s use of marine protected areas, sanctuaries, and monuments to conserve areas of the ocean came under fire during a congressional hearing this week, with House lawmakers and a bevy of witnesses decrying the use of executive authority to establish wide bands of ocean where commercial fishing is banned instead of relying on the existing regulatory system to protect fishing stocks.

“President Biden’s weaponization of marine protected areas designation is another example of his rampant abuse of executive authority to promote his radical climate agenda and social change initiatives without due consideration of the negative consequences for the economy, environment, and thousands of working Americans,” U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Fishing Then & Now: A look at marine protected areas

March 7, 2022 — Thirty years ago, [National Fisherman’s] then-editor Jim Fullilove made a prophetic statement on no-take marine reserves.

“The perceived simplicity of the no-harvest zone idea makes it dangerous,” Fullilove wrote on page 6 of the March 1992 edition. “Fencing off reserves is a fishery management tool that could become the darling of politicians and special-interest groups with anti-fishing agendas and little regard for the complexity of fish population dynamics.”

At the time, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council was considering roping off 20 percent of the coastal waters off of each state in the region to be designated as reserves.

As of Feb. 12, 2009, the council had established eight deep-water marine protected areas off the four states in its jurisdiction — North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Despite the fact that the council spent the better part of two decades designing and establishing these areas, there is no conclusive evidence — more than a decade after their implementation — that they are working.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Shifting ocean closures best way to protect animals from accidental catch

January 18, 2022 — Accidentally trapping sharks, seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles and other animals in fishing gear is one of the biggest barriers to making fisheries more sustainable around the world. Marine protected areas — sections of the ocean set aside to conserve biodiversity — are used, in part, to reduce the unintentional catch of such animals, among other conservation goals.

Many nations are calling for protection of 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 from some or all types of exploitation, including fishing. Building off this proposal, a new analysis led by the University of Washington looks at how effective fishing closures are at reducing accidental catch. Researchers found that permanent marine protected areas are a relatively inefficient way to protect marine biodiversity that is accidentally caught in fisheries. Dynamic ocean management — changing the pattern of closures as accidental catch hotspots shift — is much more effective. The results were published Jan. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We hope this study will add to the growing movement away from permanently closed areas to encourage more dynamic ocean management,” said senior author Ray Hilborn, a professor at the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “Also, by showing the relative ineffectiveness of static areas, we hope it will make conservation advocates aware that permanent closed areas are much less effective in reducing accidental catch than changes in fishing methods.”

Read the full story at UW News

Retraction: Study of marine protected areas deemed flawed with conflict of interest

December 17, 2021 — Sometimes fishermen get lucky, and their complaints about flawed data get noticed by scientists. Such was the case with an article about Marine Protected Areas that’s been used to justify a new push for ocean zoning — including the recent 30×30 initiative to shutter up to 30 percent of the nation’s waters.

“A retraction is a Big Deal in science, especially from a prominent journal,” wrote Max Mossler in a post on the University of Washington’s Sustainable Fisheries UW.

It’s an even bigger deal — or should be — if that article is being used to position policy at the federal level.

The original piece, Mossler writes, “claimed that closing an additional 5 percent of the ocean to fishing would increase fish catches by 20 percent.” Some of the biggest titles in the mainstream press picked it up.

We’re talking End of Fish by 2048-level propaganda.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Due To Climate Change, Ocean Habitats Could Be Remarkably Different By 2060

December 1, 2021 — A new study projects how climate change will affect the oceans, and protected areas in particular. The scientists used a series of different warming scenarios to determine how climate change might alter the oceans.

According to lead author Steven Mana’oakamai Johnson, “In all three scenarios, conditions in more than half of the ocean are going to be novel, meaning new and significantly different, than they have been in the last 50 years.”

Due to the strong links between the ocean and atmosphere, the ocean will continue to absorb fossil fuel emissions and its internal chemistry will shift in such a way that it could require updated conservation measures for 97% of large marine protected areas. And, unchecked climate change could cause increases in acidity as soon as 2030.

Read the full story at Forbes

A provocative proposal: sell fishing rights in protected seas to prevent poaching

December 1, 2021 — Marine protected areas can be a victim of their own success. By banning or restricting fishing within their waters, these reserves can build healthy populations of fish, with some swimming into neighboring waters where they can be caught. But sometimes the brimming schools are too much of a temptation, with poachers furtively darting into the protected zone for an illegal haul. Preventing this poaching is hard, experts say, because at-sea enforcement can be complicated and expensive.

Now, researchers have proposed a provocative and heretical-sounding solution: sell fishing rights within parts of plentiful marine reserves and use the money to guard other parts that remain off-limits. And in what might seem like a paradox, the approach could even end up producing more fish, the researchers reported on 17 November in Environmental Research Letters.

The proposal has received mixed reviews. “The idea may sound horrible,” says Christopher Costello, an environmental economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). And some say it’s far too risky because it could encourage governments to shrink reserves to nothing. “I don’t think you should be reducing existing no-take areas to allow more fishing,” says Jon Day, who spent 39 years helping manage Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. “That’s really dangerous.”

But other scientists and advocates are intrigued. “I could see the concept working,” says Matt Rand, who leads the large-scale marine habitat conservation program at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “It has a lot of promise.”

Read the full story at Science

NOAA considers marine sanctuary off Hawaiian Islands

November 19, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA announced today it is initiating the process to consider designating the marine portions of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument as a national marine sanctuary. This designation would build on existing management in the marine portions of the monument by adding the conservation benefits and enhanced long-term protection of a national marine sanctuary.

The United States Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Report for Fiscal Year 2021 directed NOAA to initiate the process to designate the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument as a national marine sanctuary to supplement and complement, rather than supplant, existing authorities. Stakeholders and partners, including the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve Advisory Council and the State of Hawai’i, support the current sanctuary designation process.

Since the designation of the site as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve by President Clinton in 2000, the designation as a marine national monument by President Bush in 2006, and the expansion of the monument by President Obama in 2016, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries has been a key partner and co-managing agency in the management of Papahānaumokuākea. NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, State of Hawaiʻi and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs co-manage the monument, and that hallmark co-management structure will continue. This initiative is being conducted in cooperation with the co-trustees.

“Papahānaumokuākea’s ecosystems are increasingly under pressure from threats such as marine debris, invasive species, and climate change,” said Rick Spinrad, Ph.D., NOAA Administrator. “Designation of the monument’s waters as a national marine sanctuary would complement the efforts of the four co-trustees to safeguard the monument’s natural, cultural, and historic values.”

Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is the largest contiguous fully-protected conservation area under the U.S. flag, encompassing an area of 582,578 square miles of the Pacific Ocean—an area larger than all the country’s national parks combined. Home to the highly endangered Hawaiian monk seal, threatened green turtles, extensive coral reef habitat, and many species found nowhere else on earth, the complex and highly productive marine ecosystems of the monument are significant contributors to the biological diversity of the ocean.

Papahānaumokuākea is of great importance to Native Hawaiians. Throughout the expanse of the monument, there are many wahi pana (places of great cultural significance and practice) where Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners of today reconnect with their ancestors and gods. The monument is also home to a variety of post-Western-contact historic resources, such as those associated with the Battle of Midway and 19th century commercial whaling.

Many of the monument’s extensive education, outreach, and research accomplishments have been executed under the authority of the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. Sanctuary designation would enhance the benefits and expertise offered by the National Marine Sanctuary System and NOAA staff.

Designation would also allow NOAA to apply additional regulatory and non-regulatory tools to augment and strengthen existing protections for Papahānaumokuākea ecosystems, wildlife, and cultural and maritime heritage resources. The sanctuary designation would not include any terrestrial areas or change the monument designation.

NOAA is accepting public comment on the proposal through Jan. 31, 2022. For more information on the proposed sanctuary designation and how to comment, see the Federal Register notice. Learn more at here.

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