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Professor Mumby's research on the impact of parrotfish grazing on the resilience of coral reefs has had a direct impact on the management of Caribbean reefs and fisheries. The results of his research have influenced conservation policy across the Caribbean and have led to the Governments of Belize and Bonaire enacting legislation to ban fishing of parrotfish. The work has also motivated the National Marine Fisheries Service (USA) and the Caribbean Fishery Management Council (Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands) to set annual catch and size limits for parrotfish caught in US Caribbean fisheries.
Since 1994, Professor Charles Sheppard at the University of Warwick, both individually and in collaboration with others, has published key results and observational studies into the coral reefs and islands of the Chagos Archipelago, central Indian Ocean. This is a British Overseas Territory - the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), the UK's most biodiverse marine environment, comprising five atolls including the largest in the world and ten submerged atolls and banks covering 60,000 sqkm. These studies showed the marine environment there was the least impacted in the Indian Ocean, and the largest undamaged tract of coral reefs remaining in the world. It also has the worlds highest reef fish biomass, highest densities of the huge but endangered coconut crabs, and is the most unpolluted marine environment recorded in the world. Results in 250 papers to date from over 100 collaborators including several from Warwick (PhD students to Professors), provided the scientific basis for the UK Government's declaration in 2010 of the largest strictly no-take Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the world. The MPA exceeds 650,000 sqkm. The intention is to conserve this huge and globally important area in its present condition, for the benefit of the Indian Ocean countries, and to act as a scientific reference site, or baseline, for tropical studies world-wide. This declaration is a major step forward for marine conservation and food security in a region that has undergone massive decline, both in its ecological condition and ability to supply protein for inhabitants of many of the world's poorest countries.
Newcastle University research has made significant contributions to international best practice guidelines used to restore coral reefs. Coral reefs are the most biologically diverse eco-systems on earth, directly and indirectly providing an estimated $375 billion per year in ecosystem services. Despite their importance, very little work had been undertaken to assess the strategies used to rehabilitate damaged reefs prior to the Newcastle research. Research findings have subsequently been incorporated into international best practice guidelines which are used by a diverse group of users including reef managers who use them to plan more ecologically robust reefs and maritime insurers who use them to assess insurance claims related to reef damage by grounded ships.
Based on biogenic reef research at Heriot-Watt University (HWU), nine Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been designated and established in the Northeast Atlantic, Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and a further six are under consideration. These MPAs represent 10% of the Caribbean Sea area, 6% of the UK's inshore Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and 18% of the MPAs under consideration in Scotland. In addition, our ecological assessments of the biodiversity value and structure of biogenic habitats, and their sensitivities to widespread stressors, stakeholder conflict assessment and economic assessments have underpinned the objectives, management measures and assessment of MPAs, and other marine spatial planning initiatives, undertaken in the context of both the current marine environmental conditions and future climate change trajectories.