Blue Haven: NZ Marine Reserves, Model for the World (Nat'l Geographic)

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By Kennedy Warne
Photographs by Brian Skerry

High-tech harvesting and wasteful management have brought world fish stocks to dangerous lows. This story explores the fish crisis—as well as the hope for a new relationship between man and the sea. New Zealand marine reserves are a model for the world.


Rolling a fresh cigarette, Bill Ballantine gives a sardonic laugh as he recalls the headline when New Zealand's first marine reserve was opened in 1977—"Nothing to do at Goat Island Bay any more." He had fought for 12 years to protect two square miles (five square kilometers) of marine habitat on the coast of Northland, a region of the North Island. That protection was finally in place. To Ballantine it was the start of a new era. To the local newspaper, voicing community opposition, it was the end of one.

At issue was the reserve's no-take status. This stretch of sea was to be totally free from human interference. That meant no line fishing. No spearfishing. No hooking a lobster out of its lair. No prying off a clump of rock oysters. No reason, as far as the newspaper was concerned, for any red-blooded, outdoors-loving Kiwi man, woman, or child to bother coming to Goat Island anymore.

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For reasons not fully understood, when areas are closed to fishing, snapper aggregate within them, forming large resident populations. Spiny rock lobsters ("crayfish" to New Zealanders) do the same. Their density inside the reserve is about 15 times higher than outside. Commercial crayfishermen have cashed in on the reserve's success because the outward migration of crayfish—a process marine biologists call spillover—brings the crustaceans to their pots, strategically placed just outside the boundary. These former skeptics are now some of the reserve's staunchest defenders. They refer to it as "our reserve" and act as marine minutemen, reporting poachers and boundary cheats.

Spillover and larval export—the drifting of millions of eggs and larvae beyond the reserve—have become central concepts of marine conservation. Reserves where fishing is banned are now seen as potential stud farms and fish hatcheries, replenishing the surrounding seas. Research at Goat Island has provided some of the strongest evidence of this replenishment effect—research made possible by the fact that the reserve has been closed to fishing for 30 years.

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http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0704/feature2/index.html

@ National Geographic, April 2007, Vol. 211, No. 4