WHEN fishing was banned off Cape Canaveral in 1962 to improve security for
space launches, nobody thought much about what it meant for the fish. But almost
30 years on, the resulting marine no-go zone is being hailed as proof that ocean
nature reserves can be a huge benefit to surrounding fisheries, as well as to
wildlife.
Sports fishers in Florida are catching huge numbers of record-sized trophy
fish in the waters surrounding the Cape Canaveral marine reserve—up to 12
times as many as elsewhere along the Florida coast, researchers have found.
The world has few marine reserves in…
