ecological effects of marine protected areas empafish project ...

EMPAFISH Booklet no. 1 Ecological effects of Atlanto-Mediterranean MPAs in the EU
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o Benthic communities
First works, conducted even prior to the inauguration of protection measures,
were devoted to study the biology, ecology and distribution of some benthic
taxa and describe the spatial distribution of benthic species (Ramos 1985;
Sánchez Jerez et al. 1994; Romero & Sánchez Lizaso 1999), especially on
Posidonia oceanica beds (Romero et al. 1998; Mateo 2003). Recently, some
studies have been carried out on the distribution and abundance of Pinna
nobilis (Sánchez Jerez et al. 2003), Dendropoma petraeum (Bayle et al. 2004)
and echinoderms (Sanchez Jerez et al. 2005).
� Reserve effect
o Management of MPA
Some data were provided on the successfulness of the management and
zoning of the TIMR (Ramos et al. 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, 1992a, 1992b). The
management plan and zoning of TIMR were suitable to organize the human
activities carried out around Tabarca Island, favouring a compatible socioeconomic
development of the local community. TIMR were included too as a
case study in a review on the importance of cultural and socio-economic
factors to assess the successfulness of an MPA (Badalamenti et al. 2000;
Sánchez Lizaso et al. 2002) and the fishery sector (Sanchez Lizaso & Giner
2001).
o Fish assemblage
Descriptive data were provided some years after protection (Ramos & Bayle
1990, 1992) and about the indicator value of fish assemblage to assess the
effects of protection (Bayle & Ramos 1993). UVC monitoring program show
how TIMR harbours a very rich and diverse fish assemblage as compared to
unprotected areas, indicating that management measures have been
adequate to protect a number of ecologically as well as commercially
important species (Bayle 2002; Forcada 2004). Fish families responding the
best to protection measures –by having higher abundance and/or biomass
within the MPA, are serranid (groupers and combers) and sparid (sea-breams)
species. Some fish species were more abundant and/or big in size in protected
areas than in control sites. A meta-analytical approach were used to assess
the effects of protection of fishes integrating data from different studies
(Ojeda-Martínez 2004), showing the importance of implementing long-term
studies to evaluate effectively the “reserve effect”
o Benthic communities
The abundance and size structure of sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus and
Arbacia lixula) have been compared between full reserve and unprotected
areas in 2005 (Sanchez Jerez et al. 2005). Density of edible sea urchins (P.
lividus) was six times higher within the marine reserve. Descriptive studies on