Hi Stelios,

The question is raised in several papers. But I am not aware of many papers dealing specifically with this issue. However, there are some papers, among which:

Kellner, J.B. & Hastings, A. (2009) A reserve paradox: introduced heterogeneity may increase regional invasibility. Conservation Letters, 2, 115–122.

Francour, P., Mangialajo, L. & Pastor, J. (2010) Mediterranean marine protected areas and non-indigenous fish spreading. In: D. Golani & B. Appelbaum (Eds.). Fish Invasions of the Mediterranean Sea: Change and Renewal pp. 127–144. Pensoft, Sofia-Moscow, Russia.

Narščius, A., Olenin, S., Zaiko, A. & Minchin, D. (2012) Biological invasion impact assessment system: From idea to implementation. Ecological Informatics, 7, 46–51.

Bierwagen, B.G., Thomas, R. & Kane, A. (2008) Capacity of Management Plans for Aquatic Invasive Species to Integrate Climate Change. Conservation Biology, 22, 568–574.

Hope this helps

I am _very_ interested in yhis issue and, if you agree, I may contact you for collaboration.

Best wishes

Tito

Thank you Luis for the interesting papers you proposed.

In sort:

Kellner and Hastings (2009) argue that MPAs, by shifting fishing effort, are likely to increase the spatial complexity of food webs interactions affecting both native and alien species in a complex way. In some cases, an MPA will make the community more susceptible to invasion by introduced species.

Francour et al. (2010) by reviewing relevant studies argue that in old Mediterranean MPAs there is a substantial increase of the relative top predators biomass and food webs are affected are widely affected by trophic cascade and top-down control. These authors hypothesize that within old Mediterranean MPAs non-indigenous fish will be controlled by predation.

The other two papers seem less relevant (Bierwagen et al. focuses on the freshwater environment, while Narščius et al. is not about marine conservation).

The authors of the first two papers stress the complexity of the issue and argue that MPAs are not immune to bioinvasions, and simply by establishing MPAs there is no guarantee that biological invasions will be less successful (on the contrary some alien invasive species might benefit from protection, as they are actually regulated by fishing).

It seems there is no easy solution and I am not aware of an example of taking into account impacts and risks of biological invasions in the design of MPAs or of MPA networks (i.e. specifically adapting conservation planning procedures to take into account biological invasions).

[I am quite interested on the issue and open for collaboration. Feel free to contact me]

I'm working with alien and invsive marine molluscs and are currently together with other colleagues writing on an updates checklist of exotic molluscs in the Cantabrian coast. I've just made a search in google and found a file that may be sueful for you. I've made a first glance to it and it seems that here in this work they take into consideration the effects of climate change and biological invasions in the managment of MPA. http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-4/public-review-draft/ch8-mpas/sap4-4prd-chap8-all.pdf.

Carlton was one of the first who dealt with invasive species and cryptogenic species in marine areas, and as far as I remember he was principally worrying on the potential invasive effect of aliens in the receiving ecosystem, particularly also protected areas. If you search for Carlton and add a few additional key words (marine protected areas, biological invasions, cryptogenic etc) you may find a few more works dealing with this subject. Hope it helps.

Sorry for the typing errors, ;-)

Hi Alexandra,

Thanks for the link to this interesting paper. I had a deeper look and found the final published version, which is shorter than the draft, but that can be cited:

Keller, B.D., Airamé, S., Causey, B., Friedlander, A., Gleason, D.F., Grober-Dunsmore, R., Johnson, J., McLeod, E., Miller, S.L. & Steneck, R.S. (2008) Chapter 8. Marine protected areas. In: Preliminary review of adaptation options for climate sensitive ecosystems and resources. A report by the US Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. SH Julius and JM West (Eds) pp. 8.1–8.43. US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, U.S.A.

It is available here:

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-4/final-report/#finalreport

Regards,

Tito

Hi Stelios,

it might be useful to see what has been done in the Carribean MPAs for controling the invasive lion fish.

Cheers,

Sylvaine

Wonderful suggestion Sylvaine !

A quick GS search gave lots of very interesting papers related to this issue, among which:

Clark, N.A. (2012) Invasion of Reservation: US Policy Responses to the Invasive Lionfish Within Marine Protected Areas. Senior Thesis, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.

http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=theses

Harter, S. & David, A. (2010) South Atlantic Marine Protected Areas: Year Five of an Evaluation of Habitat and Fish Assemblages in a Network of Reserves. Report to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. NOAA.

ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/coris/library/NOAA/CRCP/project/1693/1693_2009_South_Atlantic_MPA_Report_SAFMC.pdf

And several others...

Many thanks !

Tito

Thank you Alexandra and Tito for the interesting Keller et al chapter. Although the chapter deals principally with Marine Protected Areas and climate change adaptation, many of the conclusions seem relevant also to biological invasions, especially for those invasions that are assisted by climate change.

To assist the discussion, I give the key findings by Keller et al:

- Implementing networks of MPAs may help spread the risks posed by climate change by protecting multiple replicates of the full range of habitats and communities within an ecosystem.

- Managers can increase resilience to climate change by managing other anthropogenic stressors that also degrade ecosystems and by protecting key functional groups.

- Overcoming the challenges of climate change will require creative collaboration among a variety of stakeholders.

- A number of opportunities exist for addressing barriers to implementation of adaptation options in MPAs.

- The most effective configuration of MPAs may be a network of highly protected areas nested within a broader management framework.

Especially the latter point, falls within the concept of ecosystem-based marine spatial management. See e.g. section 6 of my 2011 paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230730113_Ecosystem-based_marine_spatial_management_Review_of_concepts_policies_tools_and_critical_issues

Article Ecosystem-based marine spatial management: Review of concept...

Dear Nicola, indeed the impact of Caulerpa racemosa var. cylindracea on Mediterranean communities is extremely high, and this is a good example of a large scale invasion in the Mediterranean threatening biodiversity, for which MPAs and conservation planning seem not to offer solutions. In the first paper you mentioned, surveys were conducted within an MPA, and C. racemosa was very abundant!

Manual removal of the species using paint-scrapers or tweezers seems a bad idea, as it would actually assist its further spread by small fragments that will be transported by currents

Even Marine Protected Areas are not safe. Increasing numbers of visitors to these areas means they are at far greater risk of biological invasion. Many ecologically-rich areas have suffered from marine invasive species. The Wadden Sea is the largest unbroken stretch of mudflats worldwide and the largest European wetland. Over the last 100 years, it has been invaded by numerous alien species. A similar story is being repeated from the Baltic and Arctic Seas and the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from tropical coral reefs all the way to the southern shores of Tasmania, Australia. Even the Antarctic is no longer free of alien marine species.

While the picture may seem bleak, there are many ways to fight back via conservation efforts. It is much harder to eradicate an alien species in a marine environment than on land, but not impossible. If eradication is not feasible, some form of control may be achievable, even though this will need to be ongoing. In all cases, it is better to prevent the introduction in the first place.

Another management consideration is prevention through management of ballast water is gaining much attention at the international level and our ability to assess risks, predict invasions and therefore prevent them, is growing.

Surveillance and monitoring are non-negotiable management options, it increases the chance that a new arrival can be dealt with before it turns into a major new invasion.

an interest of AMP is to implement protocols for the detection of new introduced species may eventually become invasive. For example, in the bay of Saint-Brieuc, we follow every year, the species present in the ports near the nature reserve. Early detection is a solution to avoid accidentally introduced species that may become invasive.

You may refer to:

1. Salafsky, N., et al. 2002. Improving the practice of conservation: a conceptual framework and research agenda for conservation science. Conservation Biology 16:1469.

2. http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/cs/groups/public/documents/document/dcnr_002854.pdf

Thank you Azubuike and Alain for your answers. Indeed it is much harder and in the vast majority of cases impossible to eradicate a marine species unless the erradication efforts are made in the very early stages of introduction. The only example of successful eradication I know from the marine environment is that of the 'killer alga' Caulerpa taxifolia from California (Anderson 2005. Biological Invasions 7: 1003-1016). The eradication succeeded because the species was detected very early.

Prevention of new introductions through appropriate management measures for shipping, aquaculture and aquarium trade is feasible and by far more cost-effective than post-introduction attempts to control or eradicate. You might find useful the following recent publication assessing the pathways of introduction of marine species in Europe: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235967067_Invading_European_Seas_assessing_pathways_of_introduction_of_marine_aliens?ev=prf_pub

Article Invading European Seas: Assessing pathways of introduction o...

Thank you Dola for the links. Interesting documents, although with a terrestrial focus. In the marine environment, managing biological invasions is more challenging than in the terrestrial environment, as there are very limited options for successful eradication or control. There are ways to prevent new introductions but it seems impossible (or extremely costly) to take actions for the already established species.

Hi all,

You are right Azubuike that ballast waters are many times to blame. See here for instance:

http://www.wwf.se/source.php/1254140/Silent%20Invasion_2009.pdf

This study by the WWF suggests that the economic cost of dealing with existing invasive species from ballast water is more than three times the cost of preventing more.

As mentioned in a recent article in the New Scientist: "the United Nations treaty agreed in 2004 requiring ships to install kit to kill off biological stowaways in their ballast water has still not been ratified by enough nations to come into force. To come into force, the Ballast Water Convention requires 30 nations to ratify the treaty, which they have – but those nations must hold the registrations for 35 per cent of the world's merchant shipping tonnage. So far the ratifiers only rack up a smidgen over 29 per cent."

This will be discussed again in London in May 2013 during the next meeting of the environmental protection committee of the UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Cheers,

Tito

By the way...

Things are not always bad with invader species. What about this one?

Bertness, M.D. & Coverdale, T.C. (2013) An invasive species facilitates the recovery of salt marsh ecosystems on Cape Cod. Ecology, In press.

It is in pre-print in Ecology at ESA, but it is discussed here on ths "Science" journal blog:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/hated-invasive-species-helps-res.html

Does anyone have other examples ?

Cheers,

Tito

More on the Ballast Water Management Convention may be found here:

http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Environment/ballastwatermanagement/Pages/Default.aspx

It has now (March 2013) been ratified by 36 contracting parties having 29.07 % of the world's merchant shipping tonnage.

However, even after the convention is ratified, shipping will remain a major pathway of introduction of alien species because of fouling species. Anti-fouling practices are

largely based on the use of biocides, i.e. coatings that are toxic to biofouling organisms. However, due to their impact on the broader aquatic environment, the most effective (i.e. most toxic) of the anti-fouling hull coatings have been banned after the recent adoption of the IMO Anti-fouling Convention in 2004. This raises concerns that the rate of introductions of marine alien species via hull-fouling could increase, until other effective antifouling systems are developed and adopted.

See the results and discussion in:

Katsanevakis S, Zenetos A, Belchior C, Cardoso AC, 2013. Invading European Seas: assessing pathways of introduction of marine aliens. Ocean and Coastal Management 76: 64–74.