Changes in invertebrate and macroalgal populations in Tasmanian marine reserves in the decade following protection

By Neville Barrett, C. Buxton, G. Edgar. 2009

130 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Densities of macrobenthic invertebrates and macro-algae in four Tasmanian ‘no-take’ marine protected areas (MPAs) were monitored annually for 10 years following MPA establishment, with changes compared to those at external (fished) reference locations. Fishing substantially influenced the population characteristics of many species, including altering the mean size and abundance of rock lobsters and the abundance of prey species such as urchins and abalone. Strong declines in abundances of purple urchins and abalone within the largest MPA at Maria Island indicate likely indirect effects related to protection of predators from fishing. The two smallest MPAs (ca. 1 km coastal span) generated few detectable changes. Our results affirm the importance of long-term monitoring and the value of MPAs, when sufficiently large, as reference areas for determining and understanding ecosystem effects of fishing in the absence of historical baseline data.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/accac6f03949b7f91b7b6d3b5a2cfbde35a725fb

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Citations in the corpus

Bait type affects fish assemblages and feeding guilds observed at baited remote underwater video stations (2013, background): “Abalone viscera, hereafter referred to as “abalone”, was chosen as they are an important trophic component of Australian temperate rocky reefs (Barrett et al. 2009) as are urchins.”
Global patterns of kelp forest change over the past half-century (2016, background): “However, where kelp resilience is eroding and leading to declines in abundance (7, 18, 54, 64, 66, 67), impacts to ecosystem health and services can be far-reaching (19, 25, 26, 68, 69).”
Recovery of canopy-forming macroalgae following removal of the enigmatic grazing sea urchin Heliocidaris erythrogramma (2010, background): “Indeed, the presence of large spiny lobsters (Jasus edwardsii) within marine reserves has been shown to reduce local abundance of H. erythrogramma (Pederson and Johnson, 2006; Barrett et al., 2009) and decrease the likelihood of overgrazing by sea urchins (Ling et al., 2009b).”
Impacts of climate change in a global hotspot for temperate marine biodiversity and ocean warming (2011, background): “Long-term changes to species inside Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) relative to adjacent fished sites show that fishing has a major impact on the abundance and size structure of major target species in Tasmania (Barrett et al., 2009).”
Predators drive community structure in coral reef fish assemblages (2015, background): “Inside marine reserves, re-establishment of predatory lobster and fish populations resulted in decreases in herbivores such as urchins and abalone, and a corresponding increase in macroalgal cover (Edgar and Barrett 1999, Shears and Babcock 2003, Barrett et al. 2009).”