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Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a primary tool for conservation and protection of marine habitats and their associated marine life. However, 69% of MPAs are partially open to some form of fishing activity, either recreational or commercial (Turnbull, et al., 2021). In Australia, which has the second largest MPA network in the world, 75% of the total MPA area is partially protected (Roberts et al., 2020). While these partially protected areas (PPAs) provide economic and social benefits, this comes at the cost of reduced conservation benefits. Hence, the implementation of PPAs as a management tool to safeguard habitat and aquatic resources is underpinned by a tension to balance environmental, economic, and social values of multiple users.

Managing this balance requires that resource managers are cognisant of these diverse user values, and have an appropriate management framework to ensure that decision making results in socially optimal outcomes where possible. Decision making that does not considered these multi-user values can result in undesirable trade-offs, adverse environmental impacts, unnecessary complexity, ineffectiveness of management, inefficiency in resource use, social conflict and increased costs.

From the FRDC R&D priorities, access to aquatic resources, guided by good management, is fundamental for the continued delivery of economic and social benefits such as food, income, employment, recreation and cultural identity for all Australians. Optimising these benefits means sharing resources fairly using open and evidence-based processes within the limits of sustainability. As a first step to developing optimal multi-user management, there is a need to first review, and where possible, quantify the multiple values (environmental, economic, and social) that are attained through the implementation of PPAs.

Roberts, K. E., Hill, O., Cook, C. N. (2020). Evaluating perceptions of marine protection in Australia: Does policy match public expectation? Marine Policy 112: 103766
Turnbull, J. W., Johnston, E. L., Clark, G. F. (2021). Evaluating the social and ecological effectiveness of partially protected marine areas. Conservation Biology 35: 921-932.

The creation, persistence, and demise of sea urchin barrens is the most significant ecological dynamic on southeast Australian rocky reefs. Sea urchin barrens cover ca. 50% of nearshore reefs in NSW and have rapidly grown in Tasmania and far eastern Victoria. The creation and/or persistence of barrens has devastating impacts on a range of commercial and recreational fisheries, most notably abalone.

Managing fisheries to deliver societal benefits within the ecological regime driven by sea urchins presents a profound challenge. Dynamics external to the fishery are very influential and challenge classical fisheries governance paradigms. Overlayed on these ecological challenges are diverse stakeholders that have different visions for nearshore reefs and therefore the definitions of success.

New management objectives will be required, some of which will mean manipulating ecosystems and human behaviours to avoid thresholds in ecological variables in, among other species, sea urchin abundance, rather than optimizing yields in a classical fisheries sense. New institutional relationships will be required among policy makers, Indigenous groups, conservationists, and the fishing industry as they grapple with potential alternative futures for these reefs.

Considerable momentum is emerging in NSW to engage with this wicked problem. A unique opportunity exists to re-imagine the management of NSW reefs; to design a management regime in which all stakeholders have a place at the table. Fundamental to developing common purpose among diverse stakeholders will be a shared and scientifically informed understanding of the underlying ecology of reefs. This understanding will enable and promote the design for a spatial regime that serves multiple management and cultural objectives.

Achieving that shared understanding is hampered by the unavailability of scientific studies of the fisheries and ecology of sea urchins in southeast Australia. There is an urgent need to bring the comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of Centrostephanus on NSW reefs and relevance to fisheries (abalone, sea urchins) into the public domain to contribute more effectively to management.