Baseline data collected before the implementation of marine reserves is essential to disentangle the effects of natural variation in ecosystems from the direct results of protection. The Arrábida Marine Park in Portugal, which includes a marine reserve, and the Côte Bleue Marine Park in France, which includes the Carry and Couronne marine reserves, are two of the few cases where ‘before’ data were collected. In both cases, ongoing monitoring involves scientists and fishermen working together to assess the ecological and fisheries benefits provided by the reserves. The Arrábida Marine Park was implemented in 2005 and fish data have been collected by visual census since 1992. In Côte Bleue Marine Park, managers, scientists and fishermen have been cooperatively monitoring the marine reserves since 1995 by collecting fisheries and ecological data such as experimental fishery data and visual census data of fish populations.
In Arrábida Marine Park, a plan to adaptively manage the local fisheries required that the marine reserve rules be gradually implemented over a 4 year period. The management plan specifies that fisheries and conservation authorities should work with fishermen to co-manage the area surrounding the marine reserve. These collaborative monitoring approaches ensure community involvement in conservation and reserve management. Both Arrábida and Côte Bleue highlight the need to develop common and consistent monitoring plans throughout Europe. Similar monitoring data can provide ecological and socio-economic indicators to evaluate and compare the overall effects of marine reserves across locations.
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