THE controversial move to shut out commercial and recreational fishers from vast areas of the Great Barrier Reef has led to a rapid increase in fish populations.
“Everyone is a little surprised. We’ve seen a consistent pattern of recovery of coral trout over an extraordinarily large area,” says Garry Russ of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland.
In 2004, the Australian government re-zoned the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park to create the world’s largest network of marine “no-take” zones. Fishing was totally banned in a third of the park – well over 100,000 square kilometres – including parts of each…
