Filling historical data gaps to foster solutions in marine conservation

Ecological data sets rarely extend back more than a few decades, limiting our understanding of environmental change and its drivers. Marine historical ecology has played a critical role in filling these data gaps by illuminating the magnitude and rate of ongoing changes in marine ecosystems. Yet despite a growing body of knowledge, historical insights are rarely explicitly incorporated in mainstream conservation and management efforts. Failing to consider historical change can have major implications for conservation, such as the ratcheting down of expectations of ecosystem quality over time, leading to less ambitious targets for recovery or restoration. We discuss several unconventional sources used by historical ecologists to fill data gaps - including menus, newspaper articles, cookbooks, museum collections, artwork, benthic sediment cores - and novel techniques for their analysis. We specify opportunities for the integration of historical data into conservation and management, and highlight the important role that these data can play in filling conservation data gaps and motivating conservation actions. As historical marine ecology research continues to grow as a multidisciplinary enterprise, great opportunities remain to foster direct linkages to conservation and improve the outlook for marine ecosystems

Marine reserve effects on fishery profit

Some studies suggest that fishery yields can be higher with reserves than under conventional management. However, the economic performance of fisheries depends on economic profit, not fish yield. The predictions of higher yields with reserves rely on intensive fishing pressures between reserves; the exorbitant costs of harvesting low-density populations erode profits. We incorporated this effect into a bioeconomic model to evaluate the economic performance of reserve-based management. Our results indicate that reserves can still benefit fisheries, even those targeting species that are expensive to harvest. However, in contrast to studies focused on yield, only a moderate proportion of the coast in reserves (with moderate harvest pressures outside reserves) is required to maximize profit. Furthermore, reserve area and harvest intensity can be traded off with little impact on profits, allowing for management flexibility while still providing higher profit than attainable under conventional management

Global research priorities for sea turtles : informing management and conservation in the 21st century

Over the past 3 decades, the status of sea turtles and the need for their protection to aid population recovery have increasingly captured the interest of government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the general public worldwide. This interest has been matched by increased research attention, focusing on a wide variety of topics relating to sea turtle biology and ecology, together with the interrelations of sea turtles with the physical and natural environments. Although sea turtles have been better studied than most other marine fauna, management actions and their evaluation are often hindered by the lack of data on turtle biology, human–turtle interactions, turtle population status and threats. In an effort to inform effective sea turtle conservation a list of priority research questions was assembled based on the opinions of 35 sea turtle researchers from 13 nations working in fields related to turtle biology and/or conservation. The combined experience of the contributing researchers spanned the globe as well as many relevant disciplines involved in conservation research. An initial list of more than 200 questions gathered from respondents was condensed into 20 metaquestions and classified under 5 categories: reproductive biology, biogeography, population ecology, threats and conservation strategies