University Events

Description: The School for Marine Science and Technology
Department of Fisheries Oceanography and
Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences
Joint Seminar Announcement

"Understanding the role of Marine Protected Areas in protecting biodiversity and increasing food production"

Ray Hilborn
University of Washington

Wednesday, January 20, 2021
2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
via zoom

Abstract:
No-take MPAs are being advocated as an essential tool to protect biodiversity, provide climate resilience, and in certain circumstances to increase fisheries yields. There is a major international push for what is called 30x30 to have 30% of the oceans in MPAs by 2030, and numerous heads of state have made commitments to 30x30. In this talk I review the theory and empirical evidence for these claims. Both empirical evidence and theory suggest that target species yields can be increased if (1) stocks are seriously overfished and (2) the size of MPAs is set appropriate to the dispersal distances of the species and (3) the MPAs are enforced. But both empirical evidence and theory demonstrate that in the absence of overfishing yields will be reduced by establishing MPAs. It is widely argued that MPAs are proven to increase target fish abundance, and this has certainly been
demonstrated inside of closed areas in many places, but there is no empirical evidence that, in the absence of overfishing, regional abundance of target species will be increased. Remembering that the major effect of an MPA is to dislocate fishing effort to open areas, the most common pattern is to see abundance increase inside closed areas, and decline in open areas, with no-net effect. The arguments
for climate resilience and biodiversity protection are equally dubious. A major impact of climate change has been changes in species distribution, making any fixed area management ineffective as range shifts move fish from areas set up with the intention of protection. The dominant impact on marine biodiversity by fishing has been bycatch of non-target species and it is clear that bycatch is much better controlled by changes in fishing practice and incentives to fishing fleets than fixed area management. Finally, there are indeed many threats to marine
biodiversity including climate change, ocean acidification, exotic species, pollution, land- based runoff, illegal fishing and plastics. MPAs protect
the oceans from none of these.
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Zoom link:
https://umassd.zoom.us/j/93401753807?pwd=MHJVMkFDV3RQUFZhQS9lNEdTNWJlUT09

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To access the live broadcasting, go to https://echo360.org/directLogin and click on "Alternate login". You will have to login as "smast@umassd.edu" with the password: smastumassd. After login you will have to click on ALL CLASSES (MAR 700-01 -
DEOS Seminar or MAR 700-02 - DFO Seminar) and click on the green LIVE streaming.

To view a video of an SMAST seminar (post-October 1, 2014), go to https://www.umassd.edu/smast/events/seminar-series/ and click on a highlighted title.

For additional information, please contact Sue Silva at s1silva@umassd.edu.