Uncertainty and the active adaptive management of marine reserves

Abstract

Unpredictable environmental fluctuations are a major problem in fisheries. To mitigate these uncertainties, reserves are advocated to help ensure population persistence, reduce population and harvest variance and to provide a ‘hedge’ against management failures. Using recent insights from the modelling of marine reserves that indicate that reserves can generate a ‘win-win’ in terms of economic payoffs and ecological benefits, we propose a six-step process for managing reserves with uncertainty and argue in favour of initially establishing less than desirable reserve sizes where stakeholder resistance to reserves may be preventing their implementation. Show more