15. Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, USAThe Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge at Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, contains two areas that have beenclosed to fishing since 1962: the Banana Creek Reserve and the North Banana River Reserve. Unlike most of theareas that we discuss in this report, they were not protected for conservation or for fisheries managementpurposes. The two estuarine areas that make up the refuge are closed to public access for the security of thenearby Kennedy Space Center, and have a total area of 40km 2 (16km 2 and 24km 2 ). They constituteapproximately 22% of the total estuarine area of the Refuge which covers is 180km 2 . In addition, 60km 2 of theSouth Banana River was closed to motorized vessels in 1990, reducing fishing pressure in this area, and giving atotal protected area of nearly 100km 2 (J.A. Bohnsack pers. comm.) Before closure, there was intensivecommercial and recreational fishing effort in the area and fish stocks were heavily exploited. Between 1957 and1962, an average of 2.7 million kilograms of fish were landed annually in the vicinity of Merritt Island by 628commercial fishers, and a further 1.47 million kilograms landed by an average of 764,000 sport fishers(Anderson and Gehringer 1965).Using experimental fishing with trammel nets, Johnson et al. (1999) studied the fish populations in fished andunfished areas of the Refuge between 1986 and 1990 after 24-28 years of protection. They caught more fish andbigger fish in unfished areas than in fished areas. There were particularly striking differences in the abundanceand size of key game fish species with overall game fish CPUE in unfished areas 2.6 times greater than in fishedareas. The biggest difference in catch rates was for black drum, Pogonias cromis, which was 12.8 times moreabundant in unfished compared to fished areas. Red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus was 6.3 times more abundant, thecommon snook, Centropomus undecimalis, was 5.3 times more abundant and spotted seatrout, Cynoscionnebulosus, was 2.3 times more abundant. The median and maximum size of red drum, spotted sea trout andblack drum were significantly greater in unfished areas compared to fished areas. There was no significantdifference in the median size of common snook between fished and unfished areas. Johnson et al. 1999 looked atother possible influences on these catch rates, such as habitat, and other environmental factors but found thatfishing status was the most important.Bohnsack (in Roberts et al. 2001) looked at the effect of these reserves on the adjacent recreational fishery byexamining the frequency of world record size fish caught in proximity of the reserves compared to areaselsewhere in Florida. He looked at an area extending 100km north and south of the reserves (the distance beingdefined on the basis of tagging studies of movements of gamefish species) and found that though this onlyaccounted for 13% of the Florida coast, 62% of record-size black drum, 54% of red drum and 50% of spottedseatrout were caught in this area. However, only 2% of record common snook were caught within the adjacentarea. The first three game fish species are year-round residents of the Refuge, whereas snook is at its northernlimit in the Refuge and was found to leave in winter (Johnson et al. 1999).On closer examination of the occurrence of record size fish in the vicinity of the refuge, lag times were apparentfrom the beginning of protection to the point at which record fish began to appear frequently for each species.This is because it takes time for fish to grow large enough to exceed existing world records, and lag times wererelated to the longevity of the fish species (Figure 1). For spotted sea trout, which live for 15 years, recordsbegan appearing after 9 years; for red drum, which live for 35 years, the lag time was 27 years; and for blackdrum, which reach 70 years old, the lag time was 31 years. In the early 1980s new line classes were introducedand world records increased statewide as fish were caught for these line classes. However, adjacent to MerrittIsland, only the shortest lived species, spotted seatrout, had grown sufficiently large by this time to show a spurtof new world records for these line classes.By the end of the 1980s the rate of accumulation of new records slowed down for the shortest-lived species, thespotted sea trout. However, for the two longer-lived drum species, records continued to accumulate and since themid 1980s most Florida records for both of these species have been recorded from the vicinity of the MerrittIsland refuge (Figure 1). Captures of world record sized fish around the Refuge act as an indicator that spilloveris occurring. However, the reserves would have been supplying smaller sized fish to the fishery for years beforerecord-size fish appeared. This is confirmed by tagging studies.Stevens and Sulak (2001) studied the movement of game fish in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.They caught fish in the closed areas from 1986 to 1988 and 1990 to 1992 and tagged the fish. Commercial andrecreational fishers recaptured fish in the fishing grounds and researchers recaptured fish in the closed areas.They found that common snook migrated out of the protected areas south. This species was recaptured outsidethe closed area most frequently in their study, with 16.1% of the fish that were tagged being caught, comparedwith 0.8% for spotted seatrout, 2.9% for black drum and 3.1% for red drum. Snook were mainly recaptured farfrom the reserve, whereas the other species were caught mainly in the vicinity of the reserve. Common snook86
moved the greatest mean distances (148km (±12.2km), followed by red drum 47.6km (± 6.6km), black drum44.7km (± 18.2km) and spotted seatrout moved a mean distance of 10km (± 2.4km). Stevens and Sulak (2001)conclude that the closed areas do contribute large fish to adjacent fishing grounds and that red drum, black drumand spotted seatrout all spawn within the restricted area and potentially enhance juvenile recruitment to adjacentfished areas.Cumulative world records30252015105Black drum01960 1970 1980 1990 200040302010*Red drum*01960 1970 1980 1990 2000353025Spotted seatrout2015105 *01960 1970 1980 1990 2000Figure 1: Cumulative world records for black drum, red drum and spottedseatrout in the 200 km coastal section adjoining the Merritt Island WildlifeRefuge (open circles) and records from rest of Florida (filled circles).Asterisks show date protection began. Dashed lines show period followingintroduction of new fishing line classes for records during which newrecords were added more quickly. Arrows show the points at which therewas a rapid increase in rate of accumulation of new records for each speciesadjacent to the Refuge. Reprinted with permission from (Roberts et al. 2001).Copyright (2001) American <strong>Association</strong> for the Advancement of Science.In a different study on the dispersal of oxytetracycline tagged juvenile red drum (the chemical leaves a mark inthe ear bones of fish) released in an estuarine area in South Carolina, Collins et al. (2002) found substantialdispersal of fish but many remained within the area of release (1.8 by 3.2km) until they reached maturity ataround three years old. After this they left the estuary. Collins et al. (2002) argue that their study supports the useof networks of small no-take reserves protecting the appropriate combination of juvenile habitat to enhancerecruitment of red drum to the spawning stock.Some critics suggest that the high numbers of world records from the Merritt Island area should be attributed tosuperior habitat in the area studied rather than to the closed status of the area (e.g. Wickstrom 2002). However,large areas of similar habitat can be found throughout Florida, for example in other areas of the Indian RiverLagoon, Pensacola, St Andrews, Apalachicola, Tampa, Biscayne and Florida Bays, Charlotte Harbour, Ten87
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The fishery effects ofmarine reserv
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ContentsPart 1: Review1. Summary 62
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Part 1: Review5
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egan being published. Those studies
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unprotected area (21.2cm vs 38.1cm)
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species of snappers and grouper are
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6.1 What are the mechanisms involve
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They concluded that reserves coveri
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which there are decadal shifts in e
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managed with reserves alone, while
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However, in some areas fishers have
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Literature citedAlder, J. (1996) Co
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Fiske, S.J. (1992) Sociocultural as
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Levine, A. (2002) Global partnershi
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Roberts, C.M. and Hawkins, J.P. (20
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Part 2: Case Studies32
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Mean abundance of fish per count100
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- Page 46 and 47: Ballantine, W.J. (1991) Marine rese
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- Page 50 and 51: ReferencesAttwood, C.G. and Bennett
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