The Science of No-Take Fishery Reserves. A Guide for Managers

Product of the Connectivity Working Group:

This brochure is a product from the Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management (CRTR) Program’s Connectivity Working Group. One of six CRTR Working Groups, the activities of the Connectivity Working Group are managed on behalf of The University of Queensland through the United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

Early in its planning of activities, the Connectivity Working Group undertook a critical review of the evidence for use of no-take fishery reserves as a management tool for coastal fisheries. The presumed fisheries value of no-take reserves depends explicitly on connectivity, and we saw this as both a useful review of the field and an effective way to delineate the most important issues with respect to connectivity science needed for MPA management. The article was published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution in 2005. We recognized at the time that the information we had brought together deserved to be made more widely available to coral reef and other coastal managers, and that an article in TREE was unlikely to be seen by many of them. This brochure, which will be available electronically and on paper, is the result. 

The brochure is based on the following article:

Sale, P.F., Cowen, R.K., Danilowicz, B.S., Jones, G.P., Kritzer, J.P., Lindeman, K.C., Planes, S., Polunin, N.V.C., Russ, G.R., Sadovy, Y. J., and Steneck, R.S. 2005. Critical science gaps impede use of no-take fishery reserves. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 20 (2): 74-80.