1. Parasites comprise a substantial proportion of global biodiversity and exert important ecological influences on hosts, communities and ecosystems, but our knowledge of how parasite populations respond to human impacts is in its infancy. 2. Here, we present the results of a natural experiment in which we used a system of highly successful marine protected areas and matched open-access areas i...

The drive to increase renewable electricity production in many parts of Europe has led to an increasing concentration of new wind energy sites at sea. This results in a range of environmental impacts which should be taken into account in a benefit-cost analysis of such proposals. In this paper, we use choice modelling to investigate the relative gains and losses from siting new windfarms off th...

Marine fish is one of the most important sources of animal protein for human use, especially in developing countries with coastlines. Marine fishery is also an important industry in many countries. Fifty years ago, many people believed that the ocean was so vast and so resilient that there was no way the marine environment could be changed, nor could marine fishery resources be depleted. Half a...

In 1872, the headwaters of the Yellowstone River and the surrounding forests, canyons and geyser basins were designated the world’s first national park. Since then, most nations of the world, whatever their size, have protected important biological, scenic, geological and historic places. That decision to make Yellowstone a national park set in motion a series of events with unforeseen but fort...

A network of marine protected areas was established in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary in April 2003. Geospatial modeling tools were used to advance the science and policy underlying the network design. Scientists used a modeling tool, SPEXAN, to develop and evaluate design options. This modeling tool was used to process a large amount of spatially explicit data and to produce a s...

In the Archipelago of the Azores, over 110,000 km2 of marine areas presently benefit from some form of protection, including a suite of coastal habitats, offshore areas, seamounts, hydrothermal vents, and large parcels of mid-ocean ridge. These areas are integrated in the recently established network of marine protected areas (MPAs), which stands as the cornerstone of Azorean marine conservatio...

One common approach to marine conservation is the designation of marine protected areas (MPAs). Marine mammals have been proposed as a target species for such areas due to their role as indicators of ecosystem processes. In NE Scotland, a large multiple-use MPA has been designated to protect bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus. We used broad-scale surveys throughout this MPA to model habitat...

Scientific interest in “local” or “traditional” marine knowledge and its applications in fishery and resource management have fostered linkages between the fields of marine biology and cultural anthropology. Ethnographic techniques are useful for investigating local knowledge structures, but these methods are time-consuming. In partial remedy, this paper promotes the technique of cultural conse...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are spatially defined marine units in which one or more human activities— particularly fishing—are restricted or prohibited. They represent a precautionary and ecosystem-based approach to ocean management (Mangel 2000; Pikitch et al. 2004; Jones 2006). The 1992 Convention for Biological Diversity set a target for 10% of the global marine area to be designated as MP...

Marine protected areas worldwide limit harvest to protect sensitive fisheries, but rarely do they address water quality goals that may have equally demonstrable impacts. California has over 500 coastal shoreline miles of marine protected areas designated as Areas of Special Biological Significance (ASBS), but receives untreated wet weather runoff discharges from over 1600 storm drain outfalls. ...