Sweatman, 2008: 

"To address the question of whether MPAs provide protection from outbreaks of A. planci more directly, I compared the frequency of starfish outbreaks on no-take reefs and on reefs that were open to fishing on the GBR, based on results of an extensive monitoring program. The initial zoning plan for the GBRMP was fully implemented by 1989, with no-take zones covering 4.5% of the region [7]. Zoning largely followed existing uses. Where possible, significant areas for activities that did not remove natural resources were zoned “no-take” and
conflicting uses on individual reefs were resolved by split zoning [8]. The zoning of individual reefs was not affected by their history of starfish outbreaks (see Supplemental data available on-line with this issue). Because starfish outbreaks occur in waves, not all the reefs that were surveyed for A. planci in any year were equally likely to have outbreaks. For this reason, only reefs within the regions where outbreaks were present in each year were included in the analysis (see Supplemental data). There were fewer A. planci outbreaks in no-take zones. The majority of outbreaks occur on reefs in the mid-section of the continental shelf (Fig. 1B); after allowing at least five years for zoning to take effect, surveys between mid-1994 and mid-2004 showed that proportionately fewer mid-shelf notake reefs were affected by outbreaks of A. planci (20%), compared with mid-shelf reefs that were open to fishing (75%, Fig. 1C). When all reefs were considered, the corresponding values were 8% and 57% (Fig. 1D)."

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Citation and/or URL

Sweatman, H. 2008, No-take reserves protect coral reefs from predatory starfish, Current Biology, 18: (14) R598-R599

Spatial Coverage

Great Barrier Reef-wide

Temporal Coverage

21 years to present

Update Frequency

Not applicable 

Other Information

None