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. 2020 Nov 10;117(45):28134-28139.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2000174117. Epub 2020 Oct 26.

A global network of marine protected areas for food

Reniel B Cabral  1   2   3 , Darcy Bradley  4   2   3 , Juan Mayorga  4   2   3   5 , Whitney Goodell  5 , Alan M Friedlander  5   6 , Enric Sala  5 , Christopher Costello  4   2   3 , Steven D Gaines  4   2   3
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A global network of marine protected areas for food

Reniel B Cabral et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

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Abstract

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are conservation tools that are increasingly implemented, with growing national commitments for MPA expansion. Perhaps the greatest challenge to expanded use of MPAs is the perceived trade-off between protection and food production. Since MPAs can benefit both conservation and fisheries in areas experiencing overfishing and since overfishing is common in many coastal nations, we ask how MPAs can be designed specifically to improve fisheries yields. We assembled distribution, life history, and fisheries exploitation data for 1,338 commercially important stocks to derive an optimized network of MPAs globally. We show that strategically expanding the existing global MPA network to protect an additional 5% of the ocean could increase future catch by at least 20% via spillover, generating 9 to 12 million metric tons more food annually than in a business-as-usual world with no additional protection. Our results demonstrate how food provisioning can be a central driver of MPA design, offering a pathway to strategically conserve ocean areas while securing seafood for the future.

Keywords: food security; marine protected areas; marine reserves; spillover benefits; sustainable fisheries.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Individual-pixel change in catch. Colors indicate the spillover benefit or catch difference (ΔH) made by protecting each individual pixel (the value of each pixel is estimated independently). Areas in cyan represent current fully or highly protected marine protected areas. Blue = positive ΔH, red = negative ΔH, white = zero ΔH. Each pixel is ∼55 km × 55 km.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Global food provisioning potential. (A) The globally optimized MPA network for food. The color ramp indicates the relative importance of each pixel in an optimal, globally coordinated MPA network. Green indicates positive marginal change in ΔH, and orange indicates negative marginal change in ΔH, with white marking the transition from positive to negative marginal change in ΔH (indicated by an arrow). It can also be interpreted as the optimal pixels to protect given a global MPA coverage target. The marginal change in catch as MPA coverage increases becomes negative after protecting 47% of the global ocean. Areas in cyan represent current fully or highly protected MPAs. (B) Change in catch (ΔH) as the proportion of the global ocean in MPAs increases following the optimal order of protection shown in A (black solid line); dashed and dotted lines display ΔH trajectories for three additional fisheries exploitation scenarios (brown dotted line = collapse; magenta dashed line = BAU all stocks; black dot-dashed line = MSY; see SI Appendix, Figs. S2–S4 for the MPA network maps). The background shading represents SD from the mean generated from 100 model runs. (C) Protection within EEZs (dotted line) and high seas (dashed line) areas corresponding to the sequence of area protection in A. Each pixel is ∼55 km × 55 km.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Maximum global catch benefits from MPAs under alternative future fisheries management scenarios. MPA benefit is highest if mismanagement of fisheries continues. Future improvements in conventional fisheries management reduce the potential catch benefit from MPAs. The values on the horizontal axis that represent management pertain to the MSY-weighted mean value of the ratio of exploitation rate over exploitation rate at MSY, with values greater than 1 indicating overfishing. Error bars represent SD from the mean.
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