Article #7: New Research: Marine Reserves Can Stoke Local Economies

Many people don’t think about marine species as being all that important in our everyday lives but marine life makes a big difference in most people’s lives daily.  Many people who consume fish on a weekly/daily basis would be affected if the biodiversity of the oceans species was altered by just a little bit.  That is just one reason why marine reserves are helpful and that an increase in them would greatly help our economy and help improve the biodiversity of many marine species. In this article, a National Geographic team of researchers went out and analyzed data on whether or not marine reserves are helpful to marine life and to our overall economy.  What they concluded was that “marine reserves are an effective tool for protecting biodiversity locally, with potential economic benefits including enhancement of local fisheries, increased tourism, and maintenance of ecosystem services” (National Geographic).  Their researched helped to prove that there were many benefits for everyone if marine reserves were kept up and utilized.  One of the benefits of the marine reserves was that they provided an area for marine species to increase in population and overflow into non-marine reserve areas which will be beneficial to fishermen.  Tourism also increases in areas with these reserves helping the local towns nearby.  The researchers have concluded that in order for the reserves to be effective they need to be made at two different levels, big reserves run by the government and smaller reserves run by many smaller local communities.  As of now, only about 1.2% of the world’s ocean is protected by marine reserves that are located at many places around the world and the hope is that it will soon rise to 10% by the year 2020.  

Howard, Brian C. "New Research: Marine Reserves Can Stoke Local Economies." News Watch. 3 Apr. 2013. National Geographic. 15 Apr. 2013 http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/03/new-research-marine-reserves-can-stoke-local-economies/.

Overall, I think that increasing the quantity of marine reserves would be beneficial, not only for the marine life within the reserve but for our economy as a whole.  I think that the researchers and national geographic have put together a great hypothesis that increasing the number of reserves would help boost our economy and have many benefits to our economy and the marine world, and I think that it is an idea that isn’t that far out of our reach.  Developing more marine reserves, both on the small and large scale, doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult if more communities and governments would be willing to put aside some time and money to develop the reserves.  I think our societies think too much about what would benefit them most at the moment and don’t think enough about what would potentially benefit them in the long run.  Everyone wants change to occur instantly and they don’t want to spend the time to work up to it, but over time our actions to help make that change could benefit us greatly.  These reserves have benefits for everyone/everything involved in the picture, so why not make the step to improve and increase the amount of marine reserves.