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artisanal fishers can fish almost anywhere around the island. Marettimo, on the other
hand, is almost completely surrounded by restrictive zones, a no-entry zone on the west-
ern shore, and limited entry zone surrounding another 50% of the island. This explains
why fishers from Marettimo feel their fishing grounds have been taken away. Prior to
establishing the EIMR, MPA managers should have discussed the zoning of the MPA
with fishers on all three islands to determine zone boundaries in conjunction with fish-
ers, and to determine which groups would be impacted the most and how to alleviate
the impact, particularly on those like fishers in Marettimo who are significantly isolated
from other profitable fishing grounds.

A crucial complaint of fishers in the EIMR is that they have not seen evidence of
increased yields that the reserve was supposed to provide. A central benefit and argu-
ment in favor of MPAs that most fisheries managers and MPA managers use when
establishing an MPA is the potential for MPAs to augment the growth of local fisheries
resources and local biodiversity that have been threatened (Gubbay, 1995; Suman, Shivlani,
& Milon, 1999). Fishers in the EIMR only fish around their island due to distance and
vessel limitations, meaning that the fishing grounds around Levanzo and Marettimo,
where regulations are stricter, have theoretically been limited more than those at Favignana,
even though enforcement is nonexistent. The central protest is that since the most pro-
ductive fishing grounds have been taken away, the catch per unit effort has decreased
substantially, and they are left with unproductive fishing grounds. Fishers are now fish-
ing for the same amount of time, but catching substantially less. In the areas where they
are allowed to fish, resources are further being exploited by long-distance trawling fleets
that illegally work within the reserve. This has resulted in considerable disapproval of
the reserve by local fishers and consequent conflict between local city government offi-
cials responsible for management and the fishers.

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

Marine reserves in Sicily have been deemed to have varied success. The success of a
reserve is often determined through criteria such as increased stock biomass, economic
efficiency that are determined through previous experience, and natural resource man-
agement theory (Chiappone & Sealy, 1998; Russ & Alcala, 1999; Scovazzi, 1999). What
is often overlooked is whether resource users of the reserve believe it is a success.

The two case studies presented here show two different scenarios. The first, the
GCFR, is demonstrative of a reserve that is widely supported and accepted by fishers,
scientists, and managers, where all groups believe that the reserve is helping the local
fishery and biological studies show enormous increases in biomass. The second, the
EIMR, represents a situation where neither the management staff nor the fishers believe
that the reserve is successful, but both support it and believe that it could be good for
the islands if managed properly. The EIMR, like so many other MPAs, is essentially a
paper park because stakeholders (and outsiders such as illegal trawlers) do not follow
regulations and the area that is supposed to be protected is as disturbed and overexploited
as before the reserve was instated (Bohnsack, 1993).

While both reserves are at different stages in working toward true functionality, the
interviews conducted in this study indicated that each could benefit from four modifica-
tions to current management strategies. First, communication in both reserves has not
been sufficient enough to inform resource users of reserve boundaries and regulations.
A process of consultation with local stakeholders must be created to effectively dissemi-
nate this information, which would result in increased compliance, as fishers would be
able to better identify the boundaries of where they are allowed to fish. In the GCFR,
this could be accomplished through collaboration between local scientists studying the