Perspectives on ecosystem-based approaches to the management of marine resources

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) include many subclasses (e.g.marine sanctuaries, marine parks, wildlife refuges, fisheries closures, no-take MPAs, multiple-use MPAs, marine reserves, ecological reserves) all of which can be defined based mainly upon the level of protection and the primary conservation goal (see www.mpa.gov;Lubchenco et al. 2003).MPAs, and especially the marine reserves subclass (i.e.'areas of the ocean completely protected from all extractive and destructive activities'; Lubchenco et al. 2003) represent the extreme case of the precautionary approach to managing marine resources (e.g.Lauck et al. 1998).The strong and rapidly growing interest in MPAs (and particularly in marine reserves) is reflected in the dramatic increase in the number of publications devoted to them (reviewed in Jones 2002, Gell & Roberts 2003, and the articles in 'The Science of Marine Reserves', a supplemental issue of Ecological Applications, Vol 13, Iss 1, freely available for download at www.esa-journals.org/esaonline/?request=get-static&name=s1051-0761-013-01-0001).In addition, there are now a number of sites on the World Wide Web that are either totally devoted to MPAs, or include relevant information on them: UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (www.unep-wcmc.org/protected_areas), the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO, www. piscoweb.org),and several others.This intense interest is at least partly related to MPAs having been identified and advocated as a conservation (of habitat and biodiversity) and managerial (of fisheries) tool of central importance in the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) (e.g.Agardy 2000, Stergiou 2002, Halpern & Warner 2003, Lubchenko et al. 2003, Pauly & MacLean 2003, Hilborn et al. 2004).It is hoped that MPAs will be beneficial in (1) rebuilding overexploited fish stocks, (2) preserving habitat and biodiversity, (3) maintaining ecosystem structure, (4) buffering against the effects of environmental variability, (5) serving as a control group against which populations in exploited regions can be Acknowledgements.For their influences on our development as marine scientists, we dedicate this essay to Maxwell J.