ABSTRACT
Complex spatial structure and population richness are common in marine species and can provide regional stability in the context of localized environmental perturbation, ensuring long-term persistence. The most fisheries regulations are spatially uniform over broad-scale management units that reflect political, economic, and data collection convenience. The importance of complex population heterogeneity has become well documented, but spatial management is often ad hoc with decisions based on the output from broad-scale stock assessment models that ignore fine-scale structure. The effect of spatial structure on interpretation of stock status is not considered in most harvest control rule simulations. Spatial models used to investigate marine protected areas can be adapted to account for more complex spatial interactions, and, in some instances, have been used to develop spatially explicit biological reference points. Nonlinear relationships between spatially explicit and single stock reference point calculations can result within the surplus production framework.
