MARINE RESERVES AND OCEAN NEIGHBORHOODS: The Spatial Scale of Marine Populations and Their Management

The movement of individuals defines a spatial neighborhood that can help determine marine management strategies. Here, I briefly review four fields of marine biology that each differentially illuminate the scale of marine neighborhoods: effects of marine reserves, tagging studies, microchemistry, and population genetics. These suggest adult neighborhood sizes for many demersal fish and invertebrates as small as kilometers and up to 10 to 100 km. Larval dispersal may be shorter than previously suspected: neighborhood sizes of 10 to 100 km for invertebrates and 50 to 200 km for fish are common in current compilations.

How can small reserves protect such species? One conceptual framework is to set reserve size based on adult neighborhood sizes of highly fished species and determine spacing of a reserve network based on larval neighborhoods. The multispecies nature of fisheries demands that network designs accommodate different life histories and take into account the way local human communities use marine resources.