Effective management of marine reserves after they have been established is essential if biodiversity within the reserves is to be protected.

This requires a number of activities: the marking of reserve boundaries, law enforcement, ensuring compliance with marine reserve regulations, providing information to the public, providing opportunities for community participation in reserve management and activities, and ongoing biological monitoring.

Biological Monitoring
Marine reserves provide the perfect opportunity to track the changes that occur once fishing pressures are removed from a particular area. Regular biological monitoring is necessary in order to observe trends and changing conditions within a reserve, and to further our knowledge about marine habitats, species and ecosystems. This information in turn informs the way reserves are managed, and provides useful comparisons (of fish abundance and size, for example) with areas outside a reserve.

NZBS-funded biological monitoring was carried out at six reserves in 2000/01 and seven reserves and two marine protected areas in 2001/02.

This work included monitoring of fish and invertebrates at the Tonga Island (off Abel Tasman National Park) and Long Island Kokomohua (Marlborough Sounds) marine reserves, fish monitoring and a habitat survey at the Te Whanganui a Hei Marine Reserve (Coromandel Peninsula), and fish and rock lobster monitoring at the Cape Rodney-Okakari Pt marine reserve (near Warkworth).

A draft national marine protected areas biological monitoring framework has been completed, along with a scoping exercise looking into the development of a database of marine reserve monitoring information.

Law enforcement, compliance and public information
Increased funding from the NZBS has meant improved compliance and law enforcement at New Zealand marine reserves, and the construction of new signs and interpretation.