West Is Best: Study Ranks U.S. States for Marine Conservation Progress

Compiling data from MPAtlas.org and MPA.gov; researchers from the Marine Conservation Institute in Seattle, Washington; and Mission Blue calculated the fraction of coastal waters that each state or territory has designated as a no-fishing zone.

Here's the percentage of state waters currently set aside in no-take reserves:

22.9%: Hawaii

8.7%: California

5.7%: U.S. Virgin Islands

1% or less: Florida, Puerto Rico, Oregon, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Washington, American Samoa, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maine.

0%: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire , New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas.

While science says that marine reserves help fish stocks recover, recreational fishing interests mobilzed in fierce opposition when California's marine protection areas were first proposed.

So how are those California's marine reserves working?

Six years after California put in place the nation's most expansive network of marine reserves -- a controversial experiment aimed at bringing back crashing populations of fish and other ocean species by creating dozens of "no-fishing zones" along the coast -- the effort appears to be working.

LINK (via: Pasadena Star News)