© everlessaday
The so-called ‘spillover effect’ is a long-standing debate in conservation ecology. The idea is relatively simple – put in a marine reserve (or, no-take zone, park, whatever you wish to call it as long as it restricts blanket over-fishing) and the area around the reserve eventually profits from the nearby over-production of fish (and other taxa). The idea is very attractive because even if you’re thick enough not to understand the absolute necessity of marine reserves in our age of mass, global over-exploitation, at least you might have enough grey matter to appreciate the value of more fish ‘spilling over’ into your favourite fishing area. More proposed marine reserves have been sold to the more Luddite ‘stakeholder’ this way than I care to count.
However, as attractive an idea it was, early on in the marine reserve literature (i.e., the early Devonian 1990s), there was limited (Rowley 1994; Willis et al. 2003) or only circumstantial evidence (Russ & Alcala 1996; Roberts et al. 2005) for the effect. Indeed, many have suggested that the spillover benefit, if present, depends entirely on the size of the reserve and whether adjacent areas are managed at all (Allison et al. 1996; McClanahan & Mangi 2000). Others have even suggested that marine reserves can displace fishing effort into smaller areas and change local community structure enough to facilitate invasion by exotic species (Kellner & Hastings 2009).
It is happier time now that we have more than ample evidence that marine reserves do in fact result in species spillover (e.g.,Roberts et al. 2001; Russ et al. 2004; Abesamis & Russ 2005). So it is not with any great claims of novelty that I highlight Garry Russ & Angel Alcala’s latest paper, Enhanced biodiversity beyond marine reserve boundaries: the cup spilleth-over; rather, it’s how they quantify the long-term evidence, the mechanisms for how spillover occurs and how the community changes that they deserve a mention. Read the rest of this entry »
ConservationBytes.com 