[Coral-List] New manuscript - Small, targeted MPAs (or LMMAs) can protect big coral reef fish

Peter Waldie peter.waldie at gmail.com
Wed Mar 16 18:46:50 EDT 2016


G'day Coral-listers,

We would like to draw your attention to our recent manuscript, titled
'Restricted grouper reproductive migrations support community-based
management', published this week in the journal *'Royal Society Open
Science'*.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150694

Abstract
Conservation commonly requires trade-offs between social and ecological
goals. For tropical small-scale fisheries, spatial scales of socially
appropriate management are generally small—the median no-take locally
managed marine area (LMMA) area throughout the Pacific is less than 1 km^2.
This is of particular concern for large coral reef fishes, such as many
species of grouper, which migrate to aggregations to spawn. Current data
suggest that the catchment areas (i.e. total area from which individuals
are drawn) of such aggregations are at spatial scales that preclude
effective community-based management with no-take LMMAs. We used acoustic
telemetry and tag-returns to examine reproductive migrations and catchment
areas of the grouper *Epinephelus fuscoguttatus* at a spawning aggregation
in Papua New Guinea. Protection of the resultant catchment area of
approximately 16 km^2 using a no-take LMMA is socially untenable here and
throughout much of the Pacific region. However, we found that spawning
migrations were skewed towards shorter distances. Consequently, expanding
the current 0.2 km^2 no-take LMMA to 1–2 km^2 would protect approximately
30–50% of the spawning population throughout the non-spawning season.
Contrasting with current knowledge, our results demonstrate that species
with moderate reproductive migrations can be managed at scales congruous
with spatially restricted management tools.

The article, the data that it is based on, and the full code to reproduce
analysis discussed are open access and freely available. Please feel free
to comment directly on the article, or to email me directly at
peter.waldie at gmail.com with any comments, questions, or concerns.

Cheers,
Peter Waldie on coauthors' behalf

-- 
*Peter Waldie* | PhD Candidate

[image: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies]
James Cook University, Townsville QLD 4811, Australia.

P: +61 4 2173 3010
E: peter.waldie at my.jcu.edu.au
W: http://www.coralcoe.org.au/

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