Document Actions
Reserves & Protected Areas: It's the Ecosystem
Aquatic reserves, marine protected areas, marine parks are ways to protect and restore marine species by designating areas that are protected, rather than individual species. Can these site-based management strategies help save Puget Sound?
Aquatic Reserves & Marine Protected Areas
Traditional management of harvested marine species has relied on catch and gear restrictions for protection and recovery.
Protection
and recovery strategies using marine managed areas are based not on
individual species management but on defining an area and restricting
activities within that area. Such site-based management efforts are
variously called marine protected areas, marine conservation areas,
aquatic reserves and marine parks.
People For Puget Sound is working on the Maury Island Aquatic Reserve and the Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve, and has proposed two more reserves around Protection Island and around Smith and Minor islands.
Read the latest on this strategy here.
Read the details of the aquatic reserve proposals.