Fisheries management in marine protected areas

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are recognised for their contribution to the conservation of marine resources and surrounding habitat, as well as for their potential contribution to fisheries management goals. The implications of the use of MPAs for fisheries, and in particular their benefits or effects, are the target of many studies. Many studies around the world show how strict fisheries bans within MPAs have increased fish stocks outside the protected area. Thus, such a strict fisheries management measure has benefited not only the local ecosystem but also commercial fisheries.

HELCOM Guidelines for management of Baltic Sea Protected Areas (BSPAs) recomends that management plans for BSPAs shall consider all possible negatively effecting activities including harmful fishing practices. Contracting States have also agreed in the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) to develop and implement management for fisheries inside marine protected areas in the Baltic Sea area in order to fulfil conservation targets by 2010. Currently, the marine protected areas in the Baltic Sea have very few extra management measures for fisheries.

One example of such an effort is a project initiated in 2006 by the ICES, in collaboration with the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN). The project called "Environmentally Sound Fishery Management in Protected Areas" (EMPAS; http://www.ices.dk/projects/empas.asp) and it developed fishery-management plans for the Natura 2000 sites within the German EEZ of the Baltic and North seas.  The project evaluated to what extent do specific fishing activities significantly threaten attainment of the conservation objectives of the Natura 2000 sites and what management measures reduce these conflicts and how effective would they be at helping to ensure the favourable condition of these sites (for more see Pedersen et al. 2008).

There is a clear need for further development of management options for fisheries management in the Baltic Sea MPAs especially in order to avoid by-catches of seabirds, marine mammals and non-target fish species.  

 

For more information see:

Pedersen, S.A., Fock, H., Krause, J., Pusch, C., Sell, A.L., Böttcher, U., Rogers, S.I., Sköld, M., Skov, H., Podolska, M., Piet, G.J., and Rice, J.C. 2008. Natura 2000 sites and fisheries in German offshore waters. ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access published online on December 3, 2008. http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/fsn193?ijkey=wMV9lz7DpS0JCTz&keytype=ref 

FAO. Benefits of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to fisheries: http://www.fao.org/fishery/topic/16201/en

 

Read about Baltic Sea Protected Areas (BSPAs)

 

Last updated 19 December 2008.