Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

DOI

10.1111/conl.12455

Publication Title

Conservation

Volume

11

Issue

3

Pages

e12455 (2 pages)

Abstract

(First paragraph) Chollett et al. (2017) make the case that a local network of marine protected areas (MPAs) enhances fisheries for Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) off the coast of Honduras. However, their simulation focused on one ecoregion where self-recruitment is predicted to be among the highest in the Caribbean (Cowen, Paris, & Srinivasan, 2006). The shallow banks and scattered cays of the Honduran-Nicaraguan Rise, separating the Cayman and Colombian basins, create an obstacle to the powerful southern Caribbean jet (Richardson, 2005), fostering an ideal location for topographically steered eddies and larval retention. Local management,whether based on traditional techniques or MPAs, is indeed likely to be successful in sustaining the lobster population in that region. But the authors go too far in promoting local management based on a best-case scenario where the population is largely self recruiting, and they downplay the need for international cooperation in managing one of the most economically important species in the Caribbean (Kough, Paris, & Butler IV, 2013).

Rights

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Authors.

Original Publication Citation

Kough, A. S., Paris, C. B., & Butler, M. J., IV. (2018). The spatial context of “winning” in MPA network design: Location matters. Conservation Letters, 11(3), e12455. doi:10.1111/conl.12455

ORCID

0000-0002-6052-6659 (Butler)

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