The Green Room
The creation of marine protected areas can lead to the rapid recovery of depleted fish populations, according to several new studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
See more here: http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2284
Last night at the ARC's TOSSI Research Evening, one of the presentations was from Roger Grace who has done 33 years of monitoring inside and outside the Tawharanui NO TAKE marine park, and the same for the Mimiwhangata marine reserve (where commercial fishing is banned, but recreational fishing is allowed).
It was stunning to see the difference in the marine ecology between the three areas. He showed graphically that the fishing pressure on large scale removal of snapper and crayfish has a massive impact on the marine ecology of the rocky shores.
Inside the Tawharanui No Take reserve were thousands of crayfish of all ages and sizes, a rich marine ecology of kelp forests protecting other marine plants, organisms and sponges, small numbers of kina, and a healthy balanced ecosystem.
Outside the Tawharanui No Take area, there were kina barrens where kina had exploded in numbers (due to low numbers of predators eg snapper and crays), and had grazed the rock-faces bare like sheep in a set-stocked paddock ! These kina barrens extended all around the coast and prevented the kelp forests from getting established and fostering other aquatic life. Low to no crayfish and small numbers of small snapper were present.
At Mimiwhangata, despite the marine park reserve area and despite the ban on commercial fishing, the recreational fishing pressure had resulted in the same kina barrens, lack of kelp forests, and lack of fish and crayfish. And this huge impact extends all around our coasts.
It was the clearest and most convincing evidence I've ever seen that marine reserves are absolutely vital to restore the balance, and I reckon Roger Grace should be invited around NZ to share his monitoring results !
Yep, Roger has so much information, and he's a great presenter to boot. F&B had him as guest lecturer/presenter of Sandison Memorial lecture I seem to recall, but that was a few years ago now. Maybe time to see if he's available again? If not, I wonder if someone from F&B might be able and keen to organise a presentation at regional level up here? If anyone's interested it'd be great to hear from you - drop a line (pun) to forestandbird@gmail.com .
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