Marine reserve effects on fishery profits: a comment on White et al. (2008)

A recent study (White et al. 2008) claimed that fishery profits will often be higher with management that employs no-take marine reserves than conventional fisheries management alone. However, this conclusion was based on the erroneous assumption that all landed fish have equal value regardless of size, and questionable assumptions regarding density-dependence. Examination of an age-structured version of the White et al. (2008) model demonstrates that their results are not robust to these assumptions. Models with more realistic assumptions generally do not indicate increased fishery yield or profits from marine reserves except for overfished stocks.