Bayesian Decision‐Network Modeling of Multiple Stakeholders for Reef Ecosystem Restoration in the Coral Triangle

Proposals for marine conservation measures have proliferated in the last 2 decades due to increased reports of fishery declines and interest in conservation. Fishers and fisheries managers have often disagreed strongly when discussing controls on fisheries. In such situations, ecosystem‐based models and fisheries‐stock assessment models can help resolve disagreements by highlighting the trade‐offs that would be made under alternative management scenarios. We extended the analytical framework for modeling such trade‐offs by including additional stakeholders whose livelihoods and the value they place on conservation depend on the condition of the marine ecosystem. To do so, we used Bayesian decision‐network models (BDNs) in a case study of an Indonesian coral reef fishery. Our model included interests of the fishers and fishery managers; individuals in the tourism industry; conservation interests of the state, nongovernmental organizations, and the local public; and uncertainties in ecosystem status, projections of fisheries revenues, tourism growth, and levels of interest in conservation. We calculated the total utility (i.e., value) of a range of restoration scenarios. Restricting net fisheries and live‐fish fisheries appeared to be the best compromise solutions under several combinations of settings of modeled variables. Results of our case study highlight the implications of alternate formulations for coral reef stakeholder utility functions and discount rates for the calculation of the net benefits of alternative fisheries management options. This case study may also serve as a useful example for other decision analyses with multiple stakeholders. Modelo de Red de Decisión Bayesiana de Múltiples Actores Interesados en la Restauración de Ecosistemas de Arrecife en el Triángulo de Coral     

Unintended Cultivation,Shifting Baselines,and Conflict between Objectives for Fisheries and Conservation

The effects of fisheries on marine ecosystems, and their capacity to drive shifts in ecosystem states, have been widely documented. Less well appreciated is that some commercially valuable species respond positively to fishing‐induced ecosystem change and can become important fisheries resources in modified ecosystems. Thus, the ecological effects of one fishery can unintentionally increase the abundance and productivity of other fished species (i.e., cultivate). We reviewed examples of this effect in the peer‐reviewed literature. We found 2 underlying ecosystem drivers of the effect: trophic release of prey species when predators are overfished and habitat change. Key ecological, social, and economic conditions required for one fishery to unintentionally cultivate another include strong top–down control of prey by predators, the value of the new fishery, and the capacity of fishers to adapt to a new fishery. These unintended cultivation effects imply strong trade‐offs between short‐term fishery success and conservation efforts to restore ecosystems toward baseline conditions because goals for fisheries and conservation may be incompatible. Conflicts are likely to be exacerbated if fisheries baselines shift relative to conservation baselines and there is investment in the new fishery. However, in the long‐term, restoration toward ecosystem baselines may often benefit both fishery and conservation goals. Unintended cultivation can be identified and predicted using a combination of time‐series data, dietary studies, models of food webs, and socioeconomic data. Identifying unintended cultivation is necessary for management to set compatible goals for fisheries and conservation. Cultivo Accidental, Líneas de Base Cambiantes y el Conflicto entre los Objetivos para las Pesquerías y la Conservación     

Importance of Attitudinal Differences among Artisanal Fishers toward Co-Management and Conservation of Marine Resources

Abstract:  The Chilean government has introduced a policy that gives formal property rights over defined areas of seabed to organized groups of artisanal fishers with the goal of achieving sustainable exploitation of natural resources. We assessed differences in the attitudes of participating artisanal fishers toward this form of management to understand their importance in the design and implementation of fisheries management. We used questionnaires and participatory rural appraisal techniques to survey members of six fishing management committees. Fishers' attitudes varied significantly among syndicates in three main domains: attitudes toward the environment, unresolved aspects behind the management area policy, and perceived benefits derived from adoption of the policy. These differences indicated the existence of distinct world views that structure fishers' behavior toward the marine environment and its management. In addition, the responses made by fishers correlated best with the degree of off-sector pluriactivity and their dependence on diving as a source of income. This suggested that a livelihood approach to the development of Chilean artisanal fisheries that considers the multiple economic niches of the fishers will be most effective in the implementation of dual conservation/management measures.     

Redistribution of benefits but not detection in a fisheries bycatch‐reduction management initiative

Reducing the capture of small fish, discarded fish, and bycatch is a primary concern of fisheries managers who propose to maintain high yields, species diversity, and ecosystem functions. Modified fishing gear is one of the primary ways to reduce by‐catch and capture of small fish. The outcomes of gear modification may depend on c ompetition among fishers using other similar resources and other gears in the same fishing grounds and the subsequent adoption or abandonment of modified gears by fishers. We evaluated adoption of modified gear, catch size, catch per unit effort (CPUE), yield, and fisher incomes in a coral reef fishery in which a 3‐cm escape gap was introduced into traditional traps. There were 26.1 (SD 4.9) fishers who used the experimental landing sites and 228(SD 15.7) fishers who used the control landing sites annually over 7 years. The size of fish increased by 10.6% in the modified traps, but the catch of smaller fish increased by 11.2% among the other gears. There was no change in the overall CPUE, yields, or per area incomes; rather, yield benefits were redistributed in favor of the unmodified gears. For example, estimated incomes of fishers who adopted the modified traps remained unchanged but increased for net and spear fishers. Fishers using escape‐gap traps had a high proportion of income from larger fish, which may have led to a perception of benefits, high status, and no abandonment of the modified traps. The commensal rather than competitive outcome may explain the continued use of escape‐gap traps 3 years after their introduction. Trap fishers showed an interest in negotiating other management improvements, such as increased mesh sizes for nets, which could ultimately catalyze community‐level decisions and restrictions that could increase their profits.     

Accounting for enforcement costs in the spatial allocation of marine zones

Marine fish stocks are in many cases extracted above sustainable levels, but they may be protected through restricted‐use zoning systems. The effectiveness of these systems typically depends on support from coastal fishing communities. High management costs including those of enforcement may, however, deter fishers from supporting marine management. We incorporated enforcement costs into a spatial optimization model that identified how conservation targets can be met while maximizing fishers’ revenue. Our model identified the optimal allocation of the study area among different zones: no‐take, territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs), or open access. The analysis demonstrated that enforcing no‐take and TURF zones incurs a cost, but results in higher species abundance by preventing poaching and overfishing. We analyzed how different enforcement scenarios affected fishers’ revenue. Fisher revenue was approximately 50% higher when territorial user rights were enforced than when they were not. The model preferentially allocated area to the enforced‐TURF zone over other zones, demonstrating that the financial benefits of enforcement (derived from higher species abundance) exceeded the costs. These findings were robust to increases in enforcement costs but sensitive to changes in species’ market price. We also found that revenue under the existing zoning regime in the study area was 13–30% lower than under an optimal solution. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for both the benefits and costs of enforcement in marine conservation, particularly when incurred by fishers. Justificación de los Costos de Aplicación en la Asignación Espacial de Zonas Marinas     

Incentivizing biodiversity conservation in artisanal fishing communities through territorial user rights and business model innovation

Territorial user rights for fisheries are being promoted to enhance the sustainability of small‐scale fisheries. Using Chile as a case study, we designed a market‐based program aimed at improving fishers’ livelihoods while incentivizing the establishment and enforcement of no‐take areas within areas managed with territorial user right regimes. Building on explicit enabling conditions (i.e., high levels of governance, participation, and empowerment), we used a place‐based, human‐centered approach to design a program that will have the necessary support and buy‐in from local fishers to result in landscape‐scale biodiversity benefits. Transactional infrastructure must be complex enough to capture the biodiversity benefits being created, but simple enough so that the program can be scaled up and is attractive to potential financiers. Biodiversity benefits created must be commoditized, and desired behavioral changes must be verified within a transactional context. Demand must be generated for fisher‐created biodiversity benefits in order to attract financing and to scale the market model. Important design decisions around these 3 components—supply, transactional infrastructure, and demand—must be made based on local social‐ecological conditions. Our market model, which is being piloted in Chile, is a flexible foundation on which to base scalable opportunities to operationalize a scheme that incentivizes local, verifiable biodiversity benefits via conservation behaviors by fishers that could likely result in significant marine conservation gains and novel cross‐sector alliances. Incentivar la Conservación de la Biodiversidad con Comunidades de Pesca Artesanal por medio de Derechos de Uso Territorial y la Innovación de Modelos de Negocio     

Effects of sex change on the implications of marine reserves for fisheries

Marine reserves have become widely used in biodiversity conservation and are increasingly proposed as fisheries management tools. Previous modeling studies have found that reserves may increase or decrease yields, depending on local environmental conditions and on the specific life-history traits of the fishery species. Sex-changing (female-to-male) fish are targets of some of the most important commercial and recreational fisheries in the world. The potential for disproportionate removal of the larger, older sex of such species requires new theory to facilitate our understanding of how reserves will affect the yields of surrounding fisheries, relative to fishes with separate sexes. We investigated this question by modeling the effects of marine reserves on a non-sex-changing and a sex-changing population. We used demographic parameter estimates for the common coral trout as a baseline, and we conducted extensive sensitivity analyses to determine how sustainable yields of sex-changing species are likely to be affected by reserves across a broad range of life-history parameters. Our findings indicate that fisheries for sex-changing species are unlikely to receive the same yield-enhancing benefit that non-sex-changing fisheries enjoy from marine reserves, and that often reserves tend to reduce sustainable yields for a given overall population size. Specifically, the increased egg production and high fertilization success within reserves is more than offset by the reduced egg production and fertilization success in the fished areas, relative to a system in which fishing mortality is distributed more evenly over the entire system. A key reason for this appears to be that fertilization success is reduced, on average, when males are unevenly distributed among subpopulations, as is the case when reserves are present. These findings suggests that, for sex-changing populations, reserves are more suited to rebuilding overfished populations and sustaining fishery viability, rather than enhancing fishery yields. These results are robust over a range of sex-change regimes, stock-recruitment relationships, adult mortality rates, individual growth strategies, and fertilization-success functions. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the different contributions of males and females to population growth and fishery yields when evaluating the efficacy of marine reserves for enhancement of fished species.     

Comanagement Practices Enhance Fisheries in Marine Protected Areas

Abstract:  Fishing activities worldwide have dramatically affected marine fish stocks and ecosystems. Marine protected areas (MPAs) with no-take zones may enhance fisheries, but empirical evidence of this is scant. We conducted a 4-year survey of fish catches around and within an MPA that was previously fully closed to fishing and then partially reopened under regulated comanaged fishing. In collaboration with the fishers and the MPA authority, we set the fishing effort and selected the gear to limit fishing impact on key fish predators, juvenile fish stage, and benthic communities and habitats. Within an adaptive comanagement framework, fishers agreed to reduce fishing effort if symptoms of overfishing were detected. We analyzed the temporal trends of catch per unit of effort (CPUE) of the whole species assemblages and CPUE of the four most valuable and frequent species observed inside the opened buffer zone and outside the MPA investigated. After the comanaged opening, CPUE first declined and then stabilized at levels more than twice that of catches obtained outside the MPA. Our results suggest that working closely with fishers can result in greater fisheries catches. Partial protection of coastal areas together with adaptive comanagement involving fishers, scientists, and managers can effectively achieve conservation and fishery management goals and benefit fishing communities and alleviate overfishing.     

Catalyzing sustainable fisheries management through behavior change interventions

Small-scale fisheries are an important livelihood and primary protein source for coastal communities in many of the poorest regions in the world, yet many are overfished and thus require effective and scalable management solutions. Positive ecological and socioeconomic responses to management typically lag behind immediate costs borne by fishers from fishing pressure reductions necessary for fisheries recovery. These short-term costs challenge the long-term success of these interventions. However, social marketing may increase perceptions of management benefits before ecological and socioeconomic benefits are fully realized, driving new social norms and ultimately long-term sustainable behavior change. By conducting underwater visual surveys to quantify ecological conditions and by conducting household surveys with community members to quantify their perceptions of management support and socioeconomic conditions, we assessed the impact of a standardized small-scale fisheries management intervention that was implemented across 41 sites in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The intervention combines TURF reserves (community-based territorial use rights for fishing coupled with no-take marine reserves) with locally tailored social-marketing behavior change campaigns. Leveraging data across 22 indicators and 4 survey types, along with data from 3 control sites, we found that ecological and socioeconomic impacts varied and that communities supported the intervention and were already changing their fishing practices. These results suggest that communities were developing new social norms and fishing more sustainably before long-term ecological and socioeconomic benefits of fisheries management materialized.     

Socioeconomic Factors that Affect Artisanal Fishers' Readiness to Exit a Declining Fishery

Abstract:  The emerging world crisis created by declining fish stocks poses a challenge to resource users and managers. The problem is particularly acute in poor nations, such as those in East Africa, where fishing is an important subsistence activity but high fishing intensity and use of destructive gear have resulted in declining catches. In this context developing effective management strategies requires an understanding of how fishers may respond to declines in catch. We examined the readiness of 141 Kenyan fishers to stop fishing under hypothetical scenarios of declines in catch and how socioeconomic conditions influenced their decisions. As expected, the proportion of fishers that would exit the fishery increased with magnitude of decline in catch. Fishers were more likely to say they would stop fishing if they were from households that had a higher material style of life and a greater number of occupations. Variables such as capital investment in the fishery and the proportion of catch sold had weak, nonsignificant relationships. Our finding that fishers from poorer households would be less likely to exit a severely declining fishery is consistent with the literature on poverty traps, which suggests the poor are unable to mobilize the necessary resources to overcome either shocks or chronic low-income situations and consequently may remain in poverty. This finding supports the proposition that wealth generation and employment opportunities directed at the poorest fishers may help reduce fishing effort on overexploited fisheries, but successful interventions such as these will require an understanding of the socioeconomic context in which fishers operate.     

Defining trade-offs among conservation, profitability, and food security in the California current bottom-trawl fishery

Although it is recognized that marine wild-capture fisheries are an important source of food for much of the world, the cost of sustainable capture fisheries to species diversity is uncertain, and it is often questioned whether industrial fisheries can be managed sustainably. We evaluated the trade-off among sustainable food production, profitability, and conservation objectives in the groundfish bottom-trawl fishery off the U.S. West Coast, where depletion (i.e., reduction in abundance) of six rockfish species (Sebastes) is of particular concern. Trade-offs are inherent in this multispecies fishery because there is limited capacity to target species individually. From population models and catch of 34 stocks of bottom fish, we calculated the relation between harvest rate, long-term yield (i.e., total weight of fish caught), profit, and depletion of each species. In our models, annual ecosystem-wide yield from all 34 stocks was maximized with an overall 5.4% harvest rate, but profit was maximized at a 2.8% harvest rate. When we reduced harvest rates to the level (2.2% harvest rate) at which no stocks collapsed (<10% of unfished levels), biomass harvested was 76% of the maximum sustainable yield and profit 89% of maximum. A harvest rate under which no stocks fell below the biomass that produced maximum sustainable yield (1% harvest rate), resulted in 45% of potential yield and 67% of potential profit. Major reductions in catch in the late 1990s led to increase in the biomass of the most depleted stocks, but this rebuilding resulted in the loss of >30% of total sustainable yield, whereas yield lost from stock depletion was 3% of total sustainable yield. There are clear conservation benefits to lower harvest rates, but avoiding overfishing of all stocks in a multispecies fishery carries a substantial cost in terms of lost yield and profit.     

Quantifying the squeezing or stretching of fisheries as they adapt to displacement by marine reserves

The designation of no‐take marine reserves involves social and economic concerns due to the resulting displacement of fishing effort, when fishing rights are removed from those who traditionally fished within an area. Displacement can influence the functioning of the fishery and success of the reserve, yet levels of displacement are seldom quantified after reserve implementation and very rarely before that. We devised a simple analytical framework based on set theory to facilitate reserve placement. Implementation of the framework requires maps of fishing grounds, fishing effort, or catch per unit effort for at least 2 years. The framework quantifies the level of conflict that a reserve designation might cause in the fishing sector due to displacement and the opportunities to offset the conflict through fisher spatial mobility (i.e., ability of fishers to fish elsewhere). We also considered how the outputs of the framework can be used to identify targeted management interventions for each fishery. We applied the method in Honduras, where the largest marine protected area in Central America is being placed, for which spatial data on fishing effort were available for 6 fisheries over 3 years. The proposed closure had a greater negative impact on the shrimp and lobster scuba fisheries, which concentrated respectively 28% and 18% of their effort inside the reserve. These fisheries could not accommodate the displacement within existing fishing grounds. Both would be forced to stretch into new fishing grounds, which are available but are of unknown quality. These stakeholders will likely require compensation to offset costly exploratory fishing or to travel to fishing grounds farther away from port.     

Incorporation of Spatial and Economic Analyses of Human‐Use Data in the Design of Marine Protected Areas

Abstract: Social, economic, and ecological criteria contribute to the successful design, implementation, and management of marine protected areas (MPAs). In the context of California's Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, we developed a set of methods for collecting, compiling, and analyzing data about the spatial extent and relative economic importance of commercial and recreational fishing. We interviewed 174 commercial fishers who represented the major fisheries in the initiative's north‐central coast region, which extends from Point Arena south to Pigeon Point. These fishers provided data that we used to map the extent of each of the fishing grounds, to weight the relative importance of areas within the grounds, to characterize the operating costs of each fishery, and to analyze the potential economic losses associated with proposed marine protected areas. A regional stakeholder group used the maps and impact analyses in conjunction with other data sets to iteratively identify economic and ecological trade‐offs in designations of different areas as MPAs at regional, port, and fishery extents. Their final proposed MPA network designated 20% of state waters as MPAs. Potential net economic loss ranged from 1.7% to 14.2% in the first round of network design and totaled 6.3% in the final round of design. This process is a case study in the application of spatial analysis to validate and integrate local stakeholder knowledge in marine planning.     

Effects of Customary Marine Closures on Fish Behavior,Spear‐Fishing Success,and Underwater Visual Surveys

Abstract: Customary management systems (i.e., management systems that limit the use of marine resources), such as rotational fisheries closures, can limit harvest of resources. Nevertheless, the explicit goals of customary management are often to influence fish behavior (in particular flight distance, i.e., distance at which an organism begins to flee an approaching threat), rather than fish abundance. We explored whether the flight distance of reef fishes targeted by local artisanal fishers differed between a customary closure and fished reefs. We also examined whether flight distance of these species affected fishing success and accuracy of underwater visual census (UVC) between customary closed areas and areas open to fishing. Several species demonstrated significant differences in flight distance between areas, indicating that fishing activity may increase flight distance. These relatively long flight distances mean that in fished areas most target species may stay out of the range of spear fishers. In addition, mean flight distances for all species both inside and outside the customary‐closure area were substantially smaller than the observation distance of an observer conducting a belt‐transect UVC (mean [SE]= 8.8 m [0.48]). For targeted species that showed little ability to evade spear fishers, customary closures may be a vital management technique. Our results show that customary closures can have a substantial, positive effect on resource availability and that conventional UVC techniques may be insensitive to changes in flight behavior of fishes associated with fishing. We argue that short, periodic openings of customary closures may allow the health of the fish community to be maintained and local fishers to effectively harvest fishes.     

A Transactional and Collaborative Approach to Reducing Effects of Bottom Trawling

Private‐sector financial and legal transactions have long been used to protect terrestrial habitats and working landscapes, but less commonly to address critical threats in marine environments. Transferrable and marketable fishing privileges, including permits and quotas, make it possible to use private‐sector transactions as conservation strategies to address some fishery management issues. Abating the effects of bottom trawling on the seafloor and bycatch and discard associated with the practice has proven challenging. On the Central Coast of California, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Environmental Defense Fund, local fishers and local, state, and federal authorities worked collaboratively to protect large areas of the seafloor from bottom trawling for groundfish while addressing economic impacts of trawl closures. Contingent on the adoption of trawl‐closure areas by a federal regulatory agency, TNC used private funds to purchase federal groundfish trawl permits and vessels from willing sellers. Trawl‐closure areas were designed collaboratively by combining regional biological diversity and fisheries data with local fishers’ knowledge. The private transactional strategy was designed to remedy some deficiencies in previous federal buyouts, to mitigate economic impacts from trawl closures, and to carefully align with a public regulatory process to protect “essential fish habitat” under the Magnuson‐Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. This collaborative effort protected 1.5 million ha (3.8 million acres) of seafloor, reduced trawl effort in the area by 50%, and set a precedent for collaborative partnerships between conservation and fishing interests. This is the first time a large conservation organization has taken an ownership position in a fishery and demonstrates how nongovernmental organizations can invest in fisheries to improve environmental and economic performance. Un Método Transaccional y Colaborativo para Reducir los Efectos de la Pesca de Arrastre de Fondo     

Using fisher-contributed secondary fins to fill critical shark-fisheries data gaps

Developing-world shark fisheries are typically not assessed or actively managed for sustainability; one fundamental obstacle is the lack of species and size-composition catch data. We tested and implemented a new and potentially widely applicable approach for collecting these data: mandatory submission of low-value secondary fins (anal fins) from landed sharks by fishers and use of the fins to reconstruct catch species and size. Visual and low-cost genetic identification were used to determine species composition, and linear regression was applied to total length and anal fin base length for catch-size reconstruction. We tested the feasibility of this approach in Belize, first in a local proof-of-concept study and then scaling it up to the national level for the 2017–2018 shark-fishing season (1,786 fins analyzed). Sixteen species occurred in this fishery. The most common were the Caribbean reef (Carcharhinus perezi), blacktip (C. limbatus), sharpnose (Atlantic [Rhizoprionodon terraenovae] and Caribbean [R. porosus] considered as a group), and bonnethead (Sphyrna cf. tiburo). Sharpnose and bonnethead sharks were landed primarily above size at maturity, whereas Caribbean reef and blacktip sharks were primarily landed below size at maturity. Our approach proved effective in obtaining critical data for managing the shark fishery, and we suggest the tools developed as part of this program could be exported to other nations in this region and applied almost immediately if there were means to communicate with fishers and incentivize them to provide anal fins. Outside the tropical Western Atlantic, we recommend further investigation of the feasibility of sampling of secondary fins, including considerations of time, effort, and cost of species identification from these fins, what secondary fin type to use, and the means with which to communicate with fishers and incentivize participation. This program could be a model for collecting urgently needed data for developing-world shark fisheries globally. Article impact statement: Shark fins collected from fishers yield data critical to shark fisheries management in developing nations.     

Striking a Balance between Biodiversity Conservation and Socioeconomic Viability in the Design of Marine Protected Areas

Abstract: The establishment of marine protected areas is often viewed as a conflict between conservation and fishing. We considered consumptive and nonconsumptive interests of multiple stakeholders (i.e., fishers, scuba divers, conservationists, managers, scientists) in the systematic design of a network of marine protected areas along California's central coast in the context of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. With advice from managers, administrators, and scientists, a representative group of stakeholders defined biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic goals that accommodated social needs and conserved marine ecosystems, consistent with legal requirements. To satisfy biodiversity goals, we targeted 11 marine habitats across 5 depth zones, areas of high species diversity, and areas containing species of special status. We minimized adverse socioeconomic impacts by minimizing negative effects on fishers. We included fine‐scale fishing data from the recreational and commercial fishing sectors across 24 fisheries. Protected areas designed with consideration of commercial and recreational fisheries reduced potential impact to the fisheries approximately 21% more than protected areas designed without consideration of fishing effort and resulted in a small increase in the total area protected (approximately 3.4%). We incorporated confidential fishing data without revealing the identity of specific fisheries or individual fishing grounds. We sited a portion of the protected areas near land parks, marine laboratories, and scientific monitoring sites to address nonconsumptive socioeconomic goals. Our results show that a stakeholder‐driven design process can use systematic conservation‐planning methods to successfully produce options for network design that satisfy multiple conservation and socioeconomic objectives. Marine protected areas that incorporate multiple stakeholder interests without compromising biodiversity conservation goals are more likely to protect marine ecosystems.     

Use of DNA barcoding to reveal species composition of convenience seafood

Increased education of consumers can be an effective tool for conservation of commercially harvested marine species when product labeling is accurate and allows an informed choice. However, generic labeling (e.g., as white fish or surimi) and mislabeling of seafood prevents this and may erode consumer confidence in seafood product labels in general. We used DNA barcoding to identify the species composition of two types of convenience seafood (i.e., products processed for ease of consumption): fish fingers (long pieces of fish covered with bread crumbs or batter, n = 241) and seafood sticks (long pieces of cooked fish, n = 30). In products labeled as either white fish or surimi, four teleost species were present. Less than 1.5% of fish fingers with species-specific information were mislabeled. Results of other studies show substantially more mislabeling (e.g., >25%) of teleost products, which likely reflects the lower economic gains associated with mislabeling of convenience seafood compared with whole fillets. In addition to species identification, seafood product labels should be required to contain information about, for example, harvesting practices, and our data indicate that consumers can have reasonable confidence in the accuracy of the labels of convenience seafood and thus select brands on the basis of information about current fisheries practice.     

A habitat‐based approach to predict impacts of marine protected areas on fishers

Although marine protected areas can simultaneously contribute to biodiversity conservation and fisheries management, the global network is biased toward particular ecosystem types because they have been established primarily in an ad hoc fashion. The optimization of trade‐offs between biodiversity benefits and socioeconomic values increases success of protected areas and minimizes enforcement costs in the long run, but it is often neglected in marine spatial planning (MSP). Although the acquisition of spatially explicit socioeconomic data is perceived as a costly or secondary step in MSP, it is critical to account for lost opportunities by people whose activities will be restricted, especially fishers. We developed an easily reproduced habitat‐based approach to estimate the spatial distribution of opportunity cost to fishers in data‐poor regions. We assumed the most accessible areas have higher economic and conservation values than less accessible areas and their designation as no‐take zones represents a loss of fishing opportunities. We estimated potential distribution of fishing resources from bathymetric ranges and benthic habitat distribution and the relative importance of the different resources for each port of total catches, revenues, and stakeholder perception. In our model, we combined different cost layers to produce a comprehensive cost layer so that we could evaluate of trade‐offs. Our approach directly supports conservation planning, can be applied generally, and is expected to facilitate stakeholder input and community acceptance of conservation.