Marine Protected Areas conserve habitat and populations, but their design and enforcement quality determines whether they deliver genuine welfare benefits for individual marine animals.
Marine Protected Areas deliver welfare benefits by reducing fishing mortality and habitat damage in protected zones. Fish inside well-enforced MPAs experience lower rates of injury from bycatch, habitat destruction and direct capture. However, poorly enforced MPAs - paper parks - provide no welfare benefit despite their legal designation. Ghost fishing gear removal within MPAs is an immediate welfare intervention that prevents animals from slow entanglement deaths. The welfare case for HPMAs with genuine enforcement is compelling: they create refugia where marine animal populations can recover from the chronic welfare impacts of commercial fishing.