Effective Management Of Marine Protected Areas Research Articles

Preventing poaching in marine protected areas: A crime script analysis to inform interventions

Ubiquitous poaching poses a persistent challenge to marine protected areas (MPAs) management. The global consensus to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030 has heightened the importance of effective MPA management. However, the law enforcement capacity for open-access common pool issues is frequently constrained. There remains an ongoing imperative to expand the knowledge on how to combat poaching. Drawing from environmental criminology approaches, this paper illustrates crime scripts of documented poaching cases in Taiwan's MPAs over the past decade to detail crime commission process and develops prevention strategies. We identify that poachers were often involved shore-based diving, shoreline handpicking and poaching by boats during clear summer evenings in easily accessible MPAs. To prevent marine poaching, suggested key interventions include managing access and exists, controlling fishing equipment, rationally deploying patrolling capacity and natural surveillance measures, creating traceable seafood supply chains, and increasing public vigilance and awareness. Environmental criminology approaches make poaching predictable and enable the precise allocation of law enforcement resources at a certain level. To further improve effectiveness of prevention strategies, we highlight the need to periodically review crime scripts and associated policies when new cases are identified. In addition, incorporating techniques from the best practices in MPA management into prevention strategies can also enhance the effectiveness of environmental criminology approaches in MPA poaching. This paper can inform the development of interventions and enhancing the management of MPAs toward global objectives.

Cetacean presence and ambient sound level analysis in Bermuda: A comparison to historical records

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are established to conserve nature while also preserving ecosystem services and cultural values. Many ongoing MPA discussions are centered on offshore islands, including Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, which is currently assessing a management plan to protect 20% of its EEZ. Marine mammals are essential targets to monitor as part of effective MPA management because they are keystone species. In addition, as human activities raise ocean noise levels worldwide, monitoring ambient sound levels is essential to evaluating impacts on marine ecosystems. We collected nine months of passive acoustic data (at 250 kHz sampling rate and with 24-bit resolution) between December 2021 and September 2022, approximately 24 nm south of Bermuda, close to a location where previous studies were conducted in 1966 and 2013–2014. The cetacean presence and ambient sound levels derived from our dataset will be compared to these historical datasets. Our comparative analysis focused on humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis), and beaked whales (family Ziphiidae). Results will illustrate how Bermuda’s offshore underwater soundscape has changed over nearly six decades.

The rapid expansion of Indonesia’s marine protected area requires improvement in management effectiveness

Indonesia’s marine ecosystems are among the most diverse in the world, supporting extensive critical habitats with strong connections to coastal communities. To keep pace with increasing pressures on the environment, conservation efforts need to be strengthened and expanded. The Government of Indonesia has committed to protecting marine ecosystems through establishing 32.5 million ha of marine protected areas (MPAs), with 20 million ha effectively managed, by 2030. Therefore, collating data on the status and progress of marine conservation efforts nationally is important to show the extent to which this target is being reached. Here we provide an overview of the status and trends of spatial coverage and management effectiveness of MPAs in Indonesia. As of 2020, Indonesia had made good progress in reaching its target – with 23.9 million ha MPA established and some —albeit slow— increases in MPA management effectiveness. Moving forward, we recommend that marine protection efforts in Indonesia need to balance MPAs expansion with improvement in effectiveness. Improvement of management effectiveness will require significant efforts, including improving institutional coordination, ensuring adequate human and financial resources, and strengthened monitoring, evaluation, and learning to inform adaptive management. Future MPA expansion should focus on addressing specific gaps in the existing network, such as increasing coastal habitat representation, and connectivity, or increasing recognition of a diversity of governance approaches (e.g., by communities or private entities). Progress over recent decades, however, suggests Indonesia is making progress on its marine protection goals and is well placed to meet potential future targets.

Hawksbill presence and habitat suitability of a marine reserve in Honduras

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been established to decrease the negative impacts of human activities on important marine habitats. Several sea turtle species reside within MPAs; however, analyses of habitat suitability for sea turtles within many MPAs is typically lacking. Habitat modeling and species mapping have become essential tools in determining areas suitable for species inhabitance. MaxEnt is a popular machine-learning program that uses presence-only occurrence data and is considered the best modeling method in discriminating between suitable and unsuitable habitats. Using MaxEnt, we created species distribution models (SDMs) from presence-only occurrence points for juvenile hawksbills and three environmental variables: boat traffic intensities, prey item distributions, and benthic characterizations, within the Sandy Bay West End Marine Reserve (SBWEMR) in Roatán, Honduras. Area under the receiving operator curve (AUC) values were greater than 0.75, indicating high model accuracy. Jackknife evaluations indicated algal prey item Dictyota spp., boat traffic intensity, and Geodia neptuni sponge abundance had the greatest influence on species distribution. Areas of suitability shifted based on time of day and ranged from a low probability of hawksbill presence (0.0) to a high probability of hawksbill presence (0.8). Regardless of time of day, the SBWEMR is classified as at least moderately suitable (>0.2–0.4), with least suitable habitat (0–0.2) prevalent in the most northeastern region of the reserve. The greatest suitability (>0.6–1) was evident within the mid-region and southern most regions of the reserve. Probability of hawksbill presence increased in accordance with increasing boat traffic, although there was no clear causative relationship between the two. Although the reserve overall is mostly moderately suitable, the SBWEMR remains an important local recruitment and foraging ground for juvenile hawksbills. Hawksbills have been considered resilient, continually functioning beneath their operational limits. However, with continued global depletion of essential habitats over time and lack of effective MPA management, areas of habitat suitable for hawksbill inhabitance may decrease below levels sufficient for hawksbill presence in protected areas of the Western Caribbean.

Using recreational divers to inform more efficient conservation management within a MPA - A case study from the Cape Peninsula, South Africa

In South Africa, recreational scuba diving is a popular coastal activity, which is largely carried out within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). MPAs act as the basis for marine conservation in the country, operating as the primary tool for the management of the country's marine resources. Effective management of MPAs depends on the uptake of voluntary guidelines, including Codes of Conduct by recreational users, such as the scuba diving community. With a focus on the MPA of Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), this paper aims to determine the value that Cape divers attach to the marine environment in which they dive, their understanding of the role of the TMNP MPA, and their knowledge and attitudes regarding its management. A semi-structured questionnaire with responses from around 30% of the local diving community showed that while users attached a high value to the MPA in which they dive, they presented a lack of knowledge around the regulations and conditions involved with diving within the MPA. This is associated with poor dissemination of user information and general awareness. In-depth interviews with dive operators and management personnel of the MPA indicated a disconnect between the different levels of management, operators and users. Based on this research, we propose alternative and additional management strategies for recreational scuba diving that would contribute to the success of the TMNP MPA including increased collaboration with the dive community for citizen science activities, improved stakeholder engagement and better access to information on management regulations and expectations.

Marine conservation in the Sunda Banda Seascape, Indonesia

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are considered the go-to tool for marine area-based conservation, having rapidly expanded in many countries, yet an understanding of progress and achievement in implementation remains vastly unexplored. Here, we assess the status and trends of coverage and protection, ecological conditions, marine resource use, human well-being, and management effectiveness of MPAs in the Sunda Banda Seascape (SBS), Indonesia, and provide the first comprehensive overview of marine conservation in the region. The SBS, located in the world's epicenter for marine biodiversity, has 85 designated MPAs (8.1 million ha) as of 2018, accounting for 35% of the national target of 23.4 million ha MPAs by 2020. Most SBS MPAs were recently initiated or established, and their management was strongly influenced by policy and governance changes at the national and provincial levels. SBS MPAs protect more than 30% of mangrove, seagrass, and coral reef habitats in the seascape, and surveys indicate relatively healthy coral reef conditions. Fishing is one of the most common livelihoods in the MPA communities; 90% of fishers use traditional gear types for fishing and destructive fishing is identified as the greatest threat to marine resources in the MPAs. Our findings suggest that balancing the expansion of MPAs with strengthening their management effectiveness and integrating diverse social-ecological local contexts are important aspects to achieve effective, equitable marine conservation.

Protection outcomes for fish trophic groups across a range of management regimes

Understanding how Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) improve conservation outcomes across anthropogenic pressures can improve the benefits derived from them. Effects of protection for coral reefs in the western and central Indian Ocean were assessed using size-spectra analysis of fish and the relationships of trophic group biomass with human population density. Length-spectra relationships quantifying the relative abundance of small and large fish (slope) and overall productivity of the system (intercept) showed inconsistent patterns with MPA protection. The results suggest that both the slopes and intercepts were significantly higher in highly and well-protected MPAs. This indicates that effective MPAs are more productive and support higher abundances of smaller fish, relative to moderately protected MPAs. Trophic group biomass spanning piscivores and herbivores, decreased with increasing human density implying restoration of fish functional structure is needed. This would require addressing fisher needs and supporting effective MPA management to secure ecosystem benefits for coastal communities.

Quantifying anthropogenic threats affecting Marine Protected Areas in developing countries

Conservation's capacity to deal with anthropogenic environmental threats within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) varies enormously, especially in developing countries that are often immersed in weak enforcement, ineffective management and shortages of resources. A deeper understanding of the causes of these threats is fundamental for identifying effective management solutions. Here, we investigate the presumptive drivers of environmental threats across 40 Brazilian MPAs. We categorized and quantified environmental threats from two independent sources: i) the results of systematic social surveys carried out as part of WWF's RAPPAM assessment, as primary data source, and; ii) data gathered from news media articles related to the MPAs (secondary data source). We identified 461 reports of threats that we classified into three general categories: overexploitation, urbanization and land use threats. The presence of overexploitation threats was strongly associated with extreme poverty of local communities close to the MPAs. Threats also seem to be more frequent in category V MPAs, which in Brazil are Environmental Protection Areas (EPA), with multiple use objectives. Threats were concentrated on the North and Southeast coasts of Brazil. We found that data from news media can be used for qualitative assessment of threats, but has limited potential for quantification. Our findings highlight the need for policy makers and MPA managers to adopt a broader perspective that considers the role of social inequalities in promoting and exacerbating environmental threats. While recognizing that conservation has limited capacity to address the widespread social inequalities found in many tropical developing countries, if the socioeconomic context of local communities is significantly compromising conservation efforts it may be necessary to target and prioritize social interventions as a prerequisite for effective MPA management and governance.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Coastal Marine Protected Area Management: Four Learned Lessons for Science Uptake and Upscaling

For almost two decades, marine protected areas (MPAs) have been a central instrument of coastal conservation and management policies, but concerns about their abilities to meet conservation goals have grown as the number and sizes of MPAs have dramatically increased. This paper describes how a large (15 year) program of transdisciplinary research was used to successfully measure MPA management effectiveness (ME) - how well an MPA is managed, how well it is protecting values, and how well it is achieving the various goals and objectives for which it was created. This paper addresses the coproduction and uptake of monitoring-based evidence for assessing ME in coastal MPAs by synthesizing the experiences of this program conducted with MPA managers. I present the main outcomes of the program, many were novel, and discuss four ingredients (learned lessons) that underpinned the successful uptake of science during and after the research program: (i) early and inclusive co-design of the project with MPA partners and scientists from all disciplines; (ii) co-construction of common references transcending the boundaries of disciplines, and standardized methodologies and tools; (iii) focus on outcomes that are management-oriented and understandable by end-users; and (iv) ensuring that capacity building and dissemination activities occurred during and persisted beyond the program. Standardized monitoring protocols and data management procedures, a user-friendly interface for indicator analysis, and dashboards of indicators related to biodiversity, uses and governance, were the most valued practical outcomes. Seventy-five students were trained during the projects and most of the monitoring work was conducted with MPA rangers. Such outcomes were made possible by the extended timeline offered by the three successive projects. MPA managers’ and scientists a posteriori perceptions strongly supported the relevance of such collaboration. Local monitoring and assessment meets the needs of MPA managers and forms the basis for large-scale assessments through upscaling. A long-term synergistic transdisciplinary collaboration between coastal MPA managers and research into social-ecological systems (SESs) would simultaneously i) address the lack of long-term resources for coastal monitoring and SES-oriented research; ii) increase science uptake by coastal managers, and iii) benefit assessments at higher levels or at broader geographic scales.

Contextualizing ecological performance: Rethinking monitoring in marine protected areas

Abstract The global extent of marine protected areas (MPAs) has increased rapidly in the last decade, and monitoring and evaluation are now required for effective and adaptive management of these areas. We classify monitoring in MPAs into four categories and identify a critically important, but undervalued category: human pressure monitoring that targets human activities and their impacts. Human pressure monitoring is fundamental for interpreting the results of ecological performance monitoring and for evaluating MPA management effectiveness. The consequences of ecological performance monitoring that show unsuccessful MPA performance while falsely assuming successful mitigation of human pressures could jeopardize MPA performance analysis and adaptive management, and thus be worse than not monitoring at all. Human pressure monitoring enables using MPAs as reference areas where the effects of global or regional pressures (e.g. climate change) can be disentangled from the effects of local human activities, as well as to minimize the shifting baseline phenomenon in defining healthy stocks. These benefits cannot be realized without active human pressure monitoring integrated into an adaptive management cycle that ensures effective MPA protection. In the absence of human pressure monitoring, all ecological monitoring within MPAs falls in the ambient monitoring category: monitoring that is not intended to measure conservation outcomes. We discuss the implications for monitoring programme design and provide a structure for decision‐makers on how to prioritize monitoring activities within MPAs that place greater emphasis on improving MPAs as biodiversity conservation tools over proving MPA performance.

Do managers and stakeholders have congruent perceptions on marine protected area management effectiveness?

The assessment of management effectiveness is essential to measure how well marine protected areas (MPAs) are achieving their goals and objectives. Incorporating the view of multiple stakeholders is an important component of MPA planning and management as it may simultaneously help reduce conflicts and increase adherence to rules and compliance. However, the most assessments of MPA management effectiveness is undertaken solely based on managers' perceptions. Here, we compared the perceptions of management effectiveness among managers and the management council members of three Brazilian marine reserves. Council members include stakeholders from the public and private sectors with different backgrounds. Overall, the marine reserves were classified as having medium management effectiveness, with managers perceiving higher levels of effectiveness than the council members. The main differences were related to poor communication among managers and council members and the perception of lack of participation on management decisions by council members. Assessing different perspectives on management effectiveness gives a more comprehensive understanding of the situation. Communication between managers and stakeholders is essential to guarantee that management challenges are more equally recognized. We recommend that further evaluations consider the diversity of stakeholders involved in the management to get a more realistic assessment on management effectiveness. The gap between managers and stakeholders’ views is an important indicator because it is related to the level of alignment between MPA goals and society expectations.

Recreation user knowledge, support and engagement in French MPAs: Are there reverse side-effects of the French soft regulation and management approach?

Marine and coastal recreation represents a common and increasing range of activities in marine protected areas (MPA). Understanding and factoring in the views of recreational stakeholders is considered an important component of effective MPA management. The diversity of recreation users and history of management can present stakeholder engagement challenges This paper presents the findings of a French MPA recreation user survey involving 1000 respondents across 7 recreation activity types regarding knowledge of MPAs, the perceived importance of MPAs to their recreation activity, and support for additional regulation and engagement associated with French MPAs. Respondents generally had little or no knowledge about the MPA existence and regulations in locations they accessed for recreation. A low perceived importance of MPAs as a place to recreate and low interest in engagement was also apparent. However, there was significant support for additional MPA regulation. The results demonstrate the complexity of engaging with recreation users in a country where MPAs are a relatively recent concept superimposed on well-established and historically settled human uses. It seems that soft regulation of French MPAs to avoid impinging on recreation access and public liberties is associated with an overall low awareness of MPAs. This situation questions the ability of managers to engage effectively with recreation stakeholders and indicates a need to make French MPA more visible and more understandable for users.

Profiling and Isolating Management Practices of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Philippines through Cluster Analysis

This study profiled and isolated the best management practices of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Philippines using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. It is a multivariate interdependence technique which can segment MPAs into homogeneous clusters based on reported scores from nine management constructs identified by MPA Management Effectiveness Assessment Tool (MEAT). The cluster analysis creates four distinctly profiled MPA groups the same with the MPA classification in MEAT which distributions are the following: cluster 1 (n=28), cluster 2 (n=81), cluster 3 (n=6) and cluster 4 (n=35). These clusters are profiled as institutionalized, sustained, strengthened, and established respectively. The best practices from institutionalized cluster in nine management constructs are reported in this study. The study also identified management plan, management body, financing, information, education, and communication (IEC), enforcement, monitoring and evaluation (ME), and site development as management constructs that need attention from national and local MPA managers as they scored low in most of the MPAs.

Applying organization science to assess the management performance of Marine Protected Areas: An exploratory study

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are important tools to achieve marine conservation and resources management goals. The management effectiveness of MPAs (the degree to which MPAs achieve their goals) is highly variable and can be affected by many MPA attributes, for example their design, enforcement and age. Another key factor possibly affecting MPA management effectiveness is the management performance, here conceived according to Horigue et al. definition (2014) as the “level of effort exerted to enhance and sustain management of MPAs”. Organization Science (OS), the discipline that studies organizations, can offer a useful framework to assess and interpret MPA management performance. Using an exploratory multiple case study approach, we applied OS principles to 11 Mediterranean MPAs in order to: i) characterize several MPA organizational features; ii) assess MPA management performance (evaluated as the effort deployed in, for example, planning the future, formalizing measurable goals, and implementing specific strategies). Results show that a number of organizational features and networking attributes are highly variable among the MPAs we have studied. For instance, goals are seldom measurable and the strategy to achieve goals is not systematically pursued. Two relevant outcomes emerge from this exploratory study: i) the management performance of the MPAs considered needs considerable improvements; ii) the methods and the approach proposed could help MPAs' managers and policy makers to understand how to improve their management performance and, consequently, their effectiveness.

Effect of marine reserve establishment on non-cooperative fisheries management

Introducing effective marine reserves is a critical issue in fisheries management and marine ecosystem conservation. In recent years, a number of marine reserves or no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) have been implemented worldwide, and some MPAs have shown ecological and economic benefits. However, consideration for coordinated competition between institutions, a central for successful resource management, is often omitted in research on effective MPA management. Given increasing discussions on implementing MPAs in the high seas, where international fisheries often exemplify the tragedy of the commons, understanding potential competition between institutions can affect MPA management. With this in mind, we aimed to gain generic insight into non-cooperative fisheries management with MPAs. Specifically, we explored the effect of MPA establishment on (1) competition strength between fishery institutions, (2) fish population abundance resulting from the competition, and (3) distribution of the gross fishery profit between institutions. To approach these questions, we developed a minimal model that accounts a non-cooperative behavior of fishery institutions and population dynamics under the MPAs management. We demonstrate that, given a small price-to-cost ratio, a prominent increase in fishery competition could occur as a result of introducing an MPA, leading to reductions in fisheries profits and fish population abundance, and greater unevenness in distribution of the gross fishery profit. Intensified fishery competition was typically observed in the case where the rate of population exchange between the fishing grounds and the MPA is not large, and the fraction of the MPA is intermediate, suggesting that regulation agreements will be required to coordinate the competitive harvesting.

Social capital as a key determinant of perceived benefits of community-based marine protected areas.

Globally, marine protected areas (MPAs) have been relatively unsuccessful in meeting biodiversity objectives. To be effective, they require some alteration of people's use and access to marine resources, which they will resist if they do not perceive associated benefits. Stakeholders' support is crucial to ecological success of MPAs, and their support is likely to depend on their capacity to adapt to and benefit from MPAs. We examined the influence of social adaptive capacity (SAC) on perceived benefits of MPAs in Siquijor, Philippines, in the Coral Triangle. This region has substantial biodiversity and a population of over 120 million people, many of them dependent on marine resources for food and income. The region has many MPAs, most of which are managed under decentralized governance systems. We collected survey data from 540 households in 19 villages with associated MPAs. We evaluated the influence of multiple SAC variables (e.g., occupational multiplicity and social capital) on perceived benefits with decision trees (CHAID) and qualitatively analyzed this relationship with respect to types and recipients of benefits. Our models revealed the key role of social capital, particularly trust in leadership, in influencing perceptions of benefits (χ2 = 14.762, p = 0.000). A path analysis revealed that perceptions of distributional equity were a key mechanism through which social capital affected perceived MPA benefits (root mean-square error of approximation = 0.050). Building social capital and equity within communities could lead to more effective management of MPAs and thus to expenditure of fewer resources relative to, for example, regulation enforcement.

Community perspectives of governance for effective management of marine protected areas in Malaysia

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are useful tool for conserving biodiversity and managing fisheries. The government of Malaysia has established several Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to enable overexploited marine resources to recover and to conserve coral reef ecosystems.The paper investigates the effect of governance approach on the effective management of two MPAs, Perhentian and Kapas marine parks in Terengganu State of Peninsular Malaysia. The data for this study was obtained from face-to-face interviews with local people from two MPAs using a structured questionnaire. The results of the analysis show that local participation in MPA management and fisheries regulations are significant factors for the effective MPA management in the study areas. The regression results show that users' participation has contributed significantly to the MPA governance, which indicate that local peoples' participation play an important role for effective management of MPAs in Malaysia. The MPA management activities should be coordinated with other relevant agencies and local users to achieve successful management of MPAs in Malaysia. There is a need to give priority to encourage local fishers' participation in decision making for MPAs management in the future marine resource conservation policy in Malaysia.

An overview of Marine Protected Areas in SW Europe: Factors contributing to their management effectiveness

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are considered key elements to the achievement of conservation and sustainable marine management targets. Yet, even if recently the number of MPAs has increased rapidly worldwide, the area of ocean under some type of MPA classification is far behind the international targets (e.g. Convention on Biological Diversity) considered essential for conservation of the world's oceans. Furthermore, coherence, representativeness and effectiveness of existing MPAs are largely unknown or even weakly defined. In this study, general characteristics of MPAs from Portugal, Spain and France were collected and used to evaluate conservation progress in this geographic area. In addition, an online questionnaire was administered to the MPAs managers, and focused on multiple processes inherent to each MPA, namely on the characteristics and suitability of planning, management, monitoring, governance and enforcement. Obtained responses were used to calculate the overall level of MPA management effectiveness, and multivariate analyses were used to identify the factors that most contributed to differences in effectiveness. Most MPAs are adjacent to the coast, are small in area (near 50% have less than 20 km2) and were established with multiple goals concerning species conservation and sustainable development of economic activities (e.g. fisheries). Only 9% of analysed MPAs are larger than 1000 km2 and are unequally distributed among the study area. Overall, 46% of MPAs and 59% of total area covered were established during the last five years, while only 3 of the 35 no-take areas (22% in area) were implemented during this period. High MPA effectiveness (i.e. the extent to which an MPA is protecting values and achieving its goals and objectives) was related with high levels of stakeholders support, with suitable goals, management and enforcement. Results highlighted the need to improve MPA coverage taking into account other existing MPAs to increase coherence and representativeness of networks, that new no-take areas should be implemented in key conservation sites and that management strategies (e.g. enforcement and monitoring) should be strengthened. These findings are applicable to the study area yet methodology and outcomes are pertinent to MPA management worldwide. Ultimately, strategies aiming at maximizing MPA performance are probably as important as the increase of MPA coverage.

From measuring outcomes to providing inputs: Governance, management, and local development for more effective marine protected areas

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have the potential to conserve marine resources as well as provide social and economic benefits to local communities. Yet the percentage of MPAs that might be considered “successful” or effective on ecological and/or socio-economic accounts is debatable. Measurement of biophysical and socio-economic outcome indicators has become de rigeur for examining MPA management effectiveness so that adaptive feedback loops can stimulate new management actions. Scholars and practitioners alike have suggested that more attention should be given to the inputs that are likely to lead to successful MPA outcomes. This paper briefly discusses the potential ecological and socio-economic outcomes of MPAs then reviews the literature on three categories of inputs – governance, management, and local development – that lead to effective MPAs. In conclusion, the paper presents a novel inputs framework that incorporates indicators for governance, management and development to be used in the design and analysis of MPAs.

Stakeholder participation and the use of web technology for MPA management

Stakeholder participation has received increased attention as a key process for enhancing mitigation of conflicts between different interests for the same resources and transparent decision-making in marine protected areas (MPAs). A wide range of advanced web tools is available nowadays that integrate stakeholder participation by generating new information and allow interaction between actors in MPA management. However, such technologies are frequently used without much consideration regarding the complexity of the decision to be made and the heterogeneity of stakeholder preferences and understanding in order to be related to these technologies. In order to understand how technology corresponds to the changing needs of MPA management, we have reviewed a range of different participation strategies adopted by web technology, based on a set of criteria that define a successful participation approach. We start from simple towards more sophisticated tools that have been developed worldwide in order to better inform decisions, and contribute to more effective and efficient MPA management. Finally, we draw a theoretical framework for the development of a community-based web tool with the capacity to incorporate the philosophy of stakeholder participation by generating new and high quality information flow for effective MPA management.