Protecting nursery areas without fisheries management is not enough to conserve the most endangered parrotfish of the Atlantic Ocean.

ABSTRACT

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a primary strategy for marine conservation worldwide, having as a common goal the protection of essential habitats to enhance fish population recovery. However, MPAs alone may not be effective because species are not isolated from critical impacts occurring outside their boundaries. We evaluated how protecting critical nursery habitats affect the population of an important fishing target, using a 6-year database to predict juvenile hotspots and estimate population trends of the endemic and endangered parrotfish Scarus trispinosus within a mosaic of MPAs at the Abrolhos Bank, NE Brazil. We found that important nursery habitats are within no-take areas, but both juvenile and adult populations still show a declining trend over time. MPAs failed to ensure population maintenance and recovery likely due to overfishing in adjacent areas and the lack of compliance to management rules within multiple-use and within no-take MPAs. MPAs alone are not enough to protect ecologically important endangered species, but is still one of the only conservation strategies, particularly in developing countries. Our results shed light on the need for a wider adoption of more effective conservation policies in addition to MPAs, both in Brazil and in countries with similar governance contexts.