Camille Mellin and colleagues from the Australian Institute of Marine Science write in The Conversation (4.4.16) about the positive effects on the health of the Great Barrier Reef from introducing ‘no-take’ marine reserves where commercial fishing is prohibited.
‘The world’s coral reefs face unprecedented threats. Their survival depends on how well they can cope with a long list of pressures including fishing, storms, coral bleaching, outbreaks of coral predators and reduced water quality. Together, these disturbances have caused the Great Barrier Reef to lose half of its coral cover since 1985.
‘One often-used way of protecting marine ecosystems is to close parts of the ocean to fishing, in no-take marine reserves. From research, we know that by reducing fishing you end up with more and bigger fish (and other harvested species such as lobsters).
‘But other benefits of protection might be more surprising. In a new study, we show that no-take reserves helped the Great Barrier Reef’s corals to resist a range of disturbances, such as bleaching, disease and crown-of-thorns starfish, and to recover more quickly from damage.’
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