The blue paradox: Preemptive overfishing in marine reserves

Grant R. McDermott (), Kyle C. Meng (), Gavin G. McDonald and Christopher J. Costello
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Grant R. McDermott: Department of Economics, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403
Kyle C. Meng: Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138
Gavin G. McDonald: Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Christopher J. Costello: Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138; Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019, vol. 116, issue 12, 5319-5325

Abstract: Most large-scale conservation policies are anticipated or announced in advance. This risks the possibility of preemptive resource extraction before the conservation intervention goes into force. We use a high-resolution dataset of satellite-based fishing activity to show that anticipation of an impending no-take marine reserve undermines the policy by triggering an unintended race-to-fish. We study one of the world’s largest marine reserves, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), and find that fishers more than doubled their fishing effort once this area was earmarked for eventual protected status. The additional fishing effort resulted in an impoverished starting point for PIPA equivalent to 1.5 y of banned fishing. Extrapolating this behavior globally, we estimate that if other marine reserve announcements were to trigger similar preemptive fishing, this could temporarily increase the share of overextracted fisheries from 65% to 72%. Our findings have implications for general conservation efforts as well as the methods that scientists use to monitor and evaluate policy efficacy.

Keywords: blue paradox; overfishing; marine reserves; marine protected areas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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