I was first introduced to this concept in a story about an island community whose economy relied almost entirely on the capture and export of seahorses for use in novelty items in foreign markets. Over fishing have resulted in increasingly diminishing catches and increasing levels of poverty and desperation. However, once they set aside a reserve for the seahorses, an area they determined to be an ideal breeding ground, from which the community agreed never to fish, the seahorse populations steadily rose.

In a recent report from the Nature Conservancy titled "Nature’s Investment Bank" they studied four distinct marine protected areas (MPAs) and found that they not only improve fish catches but also create new jobs, and benefit local health and communities.

According to co-author Craig Leisher, a policy adviser for the Nature Conservancy, "In all four cases, the local fisheries were in crisis before the establishment of the protected areas. The primary indicator was declining fish catch - what we called catch per unit of effort. People were having to go out for longer and fish in new places in order to catch the same amount of fish as a few years earlier. There has to be a sense of crisis before people are willing to change the status quo dramatically."

Read more at the Nature Conservancy's website