Humans benefit from MPAs because:
– Marine protected areas promote flora and fauna productivity.
– There is a greater diversity of species.
– There is greater fish biomass and reproduction.
– MPAs increase all four key biological variables – biomass, density, organism size and species richness.
– MPAs benefit adjacent areas due to the spillover of larvae and adult fishes over the long-term.
Yellow-eyed penguins/hoiho are particularly vulnerable to the direct and indirect impacts of fisheries because:
– They forage in the benthic zone in a straight line, as they use visual cues on the seafloor.
– They typically forage more than 15 km from the coast.
– Commercial set and drifting gillnets pose a medium to extreme risk to yellow-eyed penguins on mainland Aotearoa New Zealand, with gillnets being responsible for >100 reported and confirmed penguin deaths over the past 40 years.
– A 2023 study found that suitable yellow-eyed penguin foraging habitats overlapped with trawling by 61.2% and netting by 33.4%.
– Recent analysis of their diets found they primarily eat blue cod/rāwaru, red cod/hoka, blue warehou, silverside, and opalfish, who are demersal (bottom dwellers); redbait who is benthopelagic (inhabit the lower water column); and sprat/kupae, who is pelagic (inhabit the upper water column).
– Currently only 0.04% of the predicted range of yellow-eyed penguins (23,978 km2) is protected by MPAs.
Photo: Sian Mair. Taken from a safe distance and zoomed in on.