Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, California, USA.
Department of Biology and Marine Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA.
Adv Mar Biol. 2014;69:205-51. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-800214-8.00006-2.
California responded to concerns about overfishing in the 1990s by implementing a network of marine protected areas (MPAs) through two science-based decision-making processes. The first process focused on the Channel Islands, and the second addressed California's entire coastline, pursuant to the state's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). We review the interaction between science and policy in both processes, and lessons learned. For the Channel Islands, scientists controversially recommended setting aside 30-50% of coastline to protect marine ecosystems. For the MLPA, MPAs were intended to be ecologically connected in a network, so design guidelines included minimum size and maximum spacing of MPAs (based roughly on fish movement rates), an approach that also implicitly specified a minimum fraction of the coastline to be protected. As MPA science developed during the California processes, spatial population models were constructed to quantify how MPAs were affected by adult fish movement and larval dispersal, i.e., how population persistence within MPA networks depended on fishing outside the MPAs, and how fishery yields could either increase or decrease with MPA implementation, depending on fishery management. These newer quantitative methods added to, but did not supplant, the initial rule-of-thumb guidelines. In the future, similar spatial population models will allow more comprehensive evaluation of the integrated effects of MPAs and conventional fisheries management. By 2011, California had implemented 132 MPAs covering more than 15% of its coastline, and now stands on the threshold of the most challenging step in this effort: monitoring and adaptive management to ensure ecosystem sustainability.
20 世纪 90 年代，为应对过度捕捞问题，加州通过两个基于科学的决策过程，建立了一个海洋保护区（MPA）网络。第一个过程侧重于海峡群岛，第二个过程则根据该州的海洋生物保护法（MLPA），解决了加州整个海岸线的问题。我们回顾了这两个过程中科学与政策之间的相互作用和经验教训。对于海峡群岛，科学家们有争议地建议划出 30-50%的海岸线来保护海洋生态系统。对于 MLPA，MPA 旨在在网络中形成生态连接，因此设计准则包括 MPA 的最小面积和最大间距（大致基于鱼类的移动速度），这种方法还隐含地规定了要保护的海岸线的最小比例。随着 MPA 科学在加州进程中的发展，构建了空间种群模型来量化 MPA 如何受到成年鱼类运动和幼虫扩散的影响，即 MPA 网络内的种群存续如何取决于 MPA 之外的捕捞活动，以及渔业产量如何随着 MPA 的实施而增加或减少，这取决于渔业管理。这些新的定量方法增加了，但并没有取代最初的经验法则指南。未来，类似的空间种群模型将允许更全面地评估 MPA 和传统渔业管理的综合影响。到 2011 年，加州已经实施了 132 个 MPA，覆盖了其海岸线的 15%以上，现在正处于这一努力中最具挑战性的一步：监测和适应性管理，以确保生态系统的可持续性。
