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Protecting coral reefs boosts fish numbers by 10%: Study

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A new study suggests that more than 10% of the fish swimming in coral reefs are there because their habitats have been protected. Tropical reefs support vibrant communities of fish and other sea life, and they provide critical sustenance for many people living in coastal communities. As a result, they’re seen as key targets for conservation. In some places, that’s meant restrictions on when and where fishers can operate and the kind of gear they can use. Elsewhere, governments have established marine protected areas (MPAs) — essentially ocean-based parks that may not allow much fishing, if any at all. On the whole, only about 8.4% of the ocean is covered by MPAs, according to the World Database on Protected Areas. And research drawing on a 2021 study in Science called The MPA Guide reveals that an even smaller proportion, less than 3%, is “fully or highly protected.” Such statistics reveal that simply tracking the extent of protected spaces only gets us so far in understanding why some MPAs are successful in conserving sea life while others languish in holding back threats like overfishing. “It’s a bit like judging the success of your stock portfolio by the number of shares you’ve bought, rather than how well they’ve performed,” Joshua Cinner, a professor of geography and the director of the Thriving Oceans Research Hub at Australia’s University of Sydney who co-authored the new study, told Mongabay in an email. To get a read on how well MPAs and other conservation strategies for…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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