Shifting seas, shifting boundaries: Dynamic marine protected area designs for a changing climate.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are valuable tools for marine conservation that aim to limit human impacts on marine systems and protect valuable species or habitats. However, as species distributions shift due to ocean warming, acidification, and oxygen depletion from climate change, the areas originally designated under MPAs may bear little resemblance to their past state. Different approaches have been suggested for coping with species on the move in conservation. Here, we test the effectiveness of different MPA designs, including dynamic, network, and different directional orientations on protecting shifting species under climate change through ecosystem modeling in a theoretical ecosystem. Our findings suggest that dynamic MPAs may benefit some species (e.g., whiting and anchovy) and fishing fleets, and these benefits can inform the design or adaptation of MPAs worldwide. In addition, we find that it is important to design MPAs with specific goals and to account for the effects of released fishing pressure and species interactions in MPA design.

Establishing company level fishing revenue and profit losses from fisheries: A bottom-up approach.

A third of global fish stocks are overexploited and many are economically underperforming, resulting in potential unrealized net economic benefits of USD 51 to 83 billion annually. However, this aggregate view, while useful for global policy discussion, may obscure the view for those actors who engage at a regional level. Therefore, we develop a method to associate large companies with their fishing operations and evaluate the biological sustainability of these operations. We link current fish biomass levels and landings to the revenue streams of the companies under study to compute potentially unrealized fisheries revenues and profits at the level of individual firms. We illustrate our method using two case studies: anchoveta (Engraulis ringens; Engraulidae) in Peru and menhaden in the USA (Brevoortia patronus and B. tyrannus; Clupeidae). We demonstrate that both these fisheries could potentially increase their revenues compared to the current levels of exploitation. We estimate the net but unrealized fishery benefits for the companies under question. This information could be useful to investors and business owners who might want to be aware of the actual fisheries performance options of the companies they invest in.