How did a network of marine protected areas impact adjacent fisheries? Evidence from Australia

Marine‐protected areas (MPAs) are an effective means of improving habitat quality and biodiversity in the world’s oceans. While the advantages of MPAs as a mechanism for conservation and biodiversity are well established, the potential improvements to fishery performance resulting from a network of MPAs are still being established. Countries around the world have committed to establishing networks of MPAs within their waters by 2020, in response to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. This, coupled with the increasing global demand for seafood and heavy reliance on fishery resources as a source of economic development for many coastal communities, means that an understanding of how these networks can be expected to impact fishery performance is extremely important. We use a difference‐in‐difference modelling approach to isolate the change in the fishery performance associated with the south‐east marine reserve network in Australia. We find no evidence that the economic performance of adjacent fisheries was negatively impacted by the network. This lack of impact is likely due to a network design explicitly intended to avoid effort displacement in key fisheries, along with fishery management changes intended to remove excess fishing capacity.