The Sense Behind Marine Protected Areas

Abstract

When the first Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) began to be created back in the early twentieth century, few people would have believed that protecting a particular area of coastline from fishing would benefit primarily the fishermen themselves. At first sceptical of this type of regulation, fishermen (especially small scale) came increasingly to welcome the fact that specific areas are being limited so that neighbouring areas benefit and the number of catches (fish, crustaceans, molluscs) increase. In their ground-breaking work, Antoni García-Rubies and collaborators from the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CSIC) and the Department of Ecology (UB) had already demonstrated more than two decades earlier that even the most endangered species of fish could recover quickly if people took seriously the protection of a specific coastal area.