ecological effects of marine protected areas empafish project ...

EMPAFISH Booklet no. 1 Ecological effects of Atlanto-Mediterranean MPAs in the EU
Contacts
Silvia González – Biologist (reservasmarinas@mapya.es)
Oficina de la Reserva Marina, Puerto de La Graciosa, s/n
- 35540 Teguise (Lanzarote), Canary Islands
Tel : +34 928 84 22 05 / + 34 669 81 02 68 / Fax : + 34 928 84 22 05
www.mapa.es/rmarinas
La Graciosa: ecological studies
� General
o Fish assemblage
Fish assemblages of an island of the area (Alegranza) have been studied since
the nineties in subtidal, using underwater visual census (UVC) as main
sampling technique (Falcón et al. 1993, 1996), as well as intertidal zone
(Mata et al. 1993). Later, Brito et al. (1997) studied the inshore fish
community in all the reserve before and during the first years of the
implementation of the MPA, and after that, several monitoring studies were
performed with irregular periodicity (Brito et al. 1998, 2001c, 2006).
Recently, other studies partially conducted in the MPA have been published
(Tuya et al. 2004, 2006). Moreover, some works have called attention to the
recent coming-up of tropical fish fauna within the GINLMR (Brito et al. 2001b;
Falcón et al. 2002; Brito et al. 2005b)
o Benthic communities
The mapping and characterization of benthic biocoenosis off Lanzarote,
including the marine reserve of La Graciosa, was carried out during 2000 and
2001 by the National Government.
Some qualitative or semi-quantitative works devoted to the study of the
distribution of some benthic taxa, such as algae (Reyes et al. 2000) and
molluscs (Ortea et al. 2002; Rodríguez et al. 2002) can be found in the
literature, as well as some quantitative ecological studies partially conducted
in the GINLMR (Tuya et al. 2004; Barberá et al. 2005; Navarro et al. 2005;
Tuya & Haroum, 2006). Also, within some of the projects financed by the
Regional Government in order to study the reserve effect since the
implementation of the MPA (Brito et al. 1997, 1998, 2001a, 2001d, 2005a,
2006), density and size structure of the main commercial invertebrates, such
as limpets (Patella spp.) and marine snails (Osilinus spp.), have been studied.
Finally, some ecological studies of the long-spined sea urchin Diadema
antillarum have been recently initiated, but just a few preliminary results have
been published for the moment (Hernández et al. 2005a, 2005b).
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