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RESEARCH MARINE PROTECTED AREAS trawling in 2017, with more than 225,000 hours occurring inside MPAs (Table 1). Trawling inten- sity (hours per square kilometer) across the en- tire MPA network was 38% higher inside MPAs Elevated trawling inside protected compared with unprotected areas (Fig. 1A and Table 1) and 46% higher inside MPAs when areas undermines conservation comparing trawling intensity per trawled area (Table 1). This suggests that MPAs do not reduce outcomes in a global fishing hot spot fishing pressure under current management. Elevated trawling intensity inside MPAs was 1,2 1 2 3 1 especially pronounced in large-scale EU-wide MPA Manuel Dureuil *, Kristina Boerder , Kirsti A. Burnett , Rainer Froese , Boris Worm types, whereas untrawled MPAs were often small and designated by individual countries (Fig. 1, C Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly used as a primary tool to conserve and D, and fig. S2). Of all 727 MPAs, 489 were biodiversity. This is particularly relevant in heavily exploited fisheries hot spots such located in territorial waters (inside 12 nautical as Europe, where MPAs now cover 29% of territorial waters, with unknown effects on miles, 67%). fishing pressure and conservation outcomes. We investigated industrial trawl fishing and The MPAs with highest commercial trawling sensitive indicator species in and around 727 MPAs designated by the European Union. effort were typically located along the continen- We found that 59% of MPAs are commercially trawled, and average trawling intensity tal coastline (fig. S3), were recently designated, across MPAs is at least 1.4-fold higher as compared with nonprotected areas. Abundance and in IUCN categories II or V (fig. S4). No trawl- of sensitive species (sharks, rays, and skates) decreased by 69% in heavily trawled ing effort was detected in 295 of the 727 MPAs Downloaded from areas. The widespread industrial exploitation of MPAs undermines global biodiversity considered in this study, implying that at least conservation targets, elevating recent concerns about growing human pressures 59% of MPAs experienced commercial trawling. on protected areas worldwide. Of these 295 MPAs, 171 were located in territorial waters. MPAs with no commercial trawling were n light of mounting anthropogenic pressures, are often regulated under the EU Common Fish- generally smaller and older and had some IUCN spatial protection of sensitive habitats and eries Policy (table S2). category assigned, yet only 40% had manage- http://science.sciencemag.org/ species has emerged as a leading strategy to By far the most common industrial fishing ment plans, compared with 60% of commercially I halt ongoing biodiversity loss, both on land method in Europe is trawling (3), which targets trawled MPAs (table S3). and in the sea (1). However, it has been shown mainly bottom-associated fishes, often with a high We addressed the cited IUCN criterion regard- recently that about one-third of terrestrial pro- rate of unwanted bycatch (fig. S1). This fishing ing fishing impacts on other species and ecolog- tected areas experience intense human pressure, technique has been identified as a threat to many ical values (7) by assessing elasmobranchs inside potentially undermining global conservation tar- endangered species in Europe, including most and outside of MPAs and over time. We used gets and sustainable development goals (2). We elasmobranchs (sharks, rays, and skates) (9), and randomized scientific trawl surveys by the Inter- asked to which extent this conflict may also oc- has well-documented impacts on seafloor bio- national Council for the Exploration of the Sea cur in the ocean, using newly available satellite diversity (10), sensitive habitats, and indicator (ICES) to estimate relative abundance for 20 sensors that allow fine-scale, real-time quantifi- species (11). We directly quantified the extent elasmobranch species (table S4) from 1997 to 3 cation of industrial fishing effort from space ( ). of commercial trawling in the EU with respect 2016. Only surveys with gear types and depth ap- on February 22, 2019 We focused on Europe, which is both a global to MPAs. We investigated associated changes propriate to catch these species were considered. hotspotofindustrialfishing(3) and features ex- in biodiversity using elasmobranchs as indicator Data were normalized to avoid any one species tensive marine protected area (MPA) networks species because they are particularly vulnerable dominating aggregate indices. thatcover29%ofEuropean Union (EU) terri- to industrial exploitation and bycatch (12, 13), Elasmobranchs were generally rare across the torial waters (4). have one of the highest extinction risk among study area, particularly in heavily trawled areas According to International Union for the Con- marine fishes in Europe (13, 14), and are gen- (Fig. 1B). The primary aggregations west and servation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines, MPAs erally not targeted by EU MPAs (table S2). south of the British Isles are in agreement with should be managed primarily for biodiversity con- We quantified commercial trawling effort in previously described hot spots (18), and British servation objectives (5) and exclude environmen- the EU from automatic identification system MPAs also had the highest abundance of elas- tally damaging industrial activities in any of their (AIS) vessel tracking data at grid cells of 0.01° mobranchs (Fig. 1E and fig. S5). Elasmobranchs six protected-area categories (table S1) (6). With by 0.01° resolution for the year 2017, using a were caught in 141 (79%) of the 178 MPAs scientif- respect to commercial fisheries in MPAs, recent neural network algorithm with 98% precision ically surveyed by ICES. Total elasmobranch IUCN guidelines clarify that “any fishing gear when run on test data (3). AIS is legally required catch per research haul was 2.3-fold higher out- used should be demonstrated to not significantly for all EU industrial fishing vessels larger than side MPAs than inside (Fig. 1B and Table 1), and impact other species or other ecological values” 15 m, accounting for 94% of commercial trawl- a normalized multispecies abundance index was (7). In the EU, a variety of different MPA types ing effort in our data. AIS data may miss some 24% higher outside of MPAs (Table 1). This con- exist; although they may or may not adhere to fraction of smaller artisanal boats, rendering our servation paradox was especially pronounced for nonbinding IUCN criteria (table S1), all feature estimates of trawling effort conservative. All endangered and critically endangered species, biodiversity protection as a cross-cutting objec- 727 MPAs included in our study were classified which were all ≥5-fold more abundant outside tive (table S2) and contribute toward interna- as 100% marine (no terrestrial components), were MPAs (Fig. 2). tional conservation targets (8). Yet, many MPA designated before 2017, and are registered in the Size, age, and management attributes of MPAs types do not address commercial fisheries, which World Database on Protected Areas, thus count- are all thought to drive conservation outcomes ing toward international biodiversity conserva- (19). Yet under current fishing pressure, only tion targets. MPA size showed a positive trend with relative 1Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS We found that trawling efforts concentrated elasmobranch abundance in our study area (fig. S6). B3H 4R2, Canada. 2Sharks of the Atlantic Research and along coastlines of continental Europe and the No clear pattern emerged between elasmobranch Conservation Centre, Halifax, NS B3L 2Y5, Canada. 3 United Kingdom (Fig. 1A), a pattern that is con- abundance and the age of the MPA, whether it GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, 24105 Kiel, 15–17 Germany. sistent with other data sources ( ). Aggregate was classified according to the IUCN categories or *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] commercial effort exceeded 1 million hours of had a management plan (fig. S7). Of the 178 MPAs Dureuil et al., Science 362, 1403–1407 (2018) 21 December 2018 1of4 RESEARCH | REPORT scientifically surveyed, only 24 (or 13%) had no creasing trawling intensity both inside (fig. S9) (Fig. 3A and table S5), with an average decrease commercial trawling present, and in 10 of those and outside MPAs (fig. S10). of 69% across the observed gradient of trawling MPAs, elasmobranchs have been reported. These After controlling for spatial autocorrelation intensity (0 to 6.4 hours km−2). Analyzing this untrawled MPAs had indeed higher average elas- and potentially confounding effects of habitat relationship over time, we detected no trend in mobranch abundance as compared with those of and climate, we found that commercial trawling relative elasmobranch abundance in areas with commercially trawled MPAs (fig. S8). Overall, was the strongest predictor of elasmobranch rela- high trawling intensity but detected higher and elasmobranch abundance decreased with in- tive abundance across the study area (P <0.001) increasing abundance in areas with low trawling AB 60 56 52 Downloaded from R e 48 C 2.4 45 250 1 sea Latitude o 100 mmerci 40 1.5 35 rch 10 30 cat 44 a 1 25 ch 0.5 l traw 20 1 p 0.5 15 er h l in 10 http://science.sciencemag.org/ g 40 0.1 a 5 ul 0.01 0 0.1 0 Outside Inside 0.01 Outside Inside 36 −16 −12 −8 −4 0 4 8 12 −16 −12 −8 −4 0 4 8 12 Longitude Longitude C D E Marine Protected Area (OSPAR) 171156 Site of Community Importance (Habitats Directive) 102759 70573 Special Protection Area

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