Introduction
Protected areas are widely perceived as 'magic bullets' to be launched against overexploitation, pollution, and development, and to 'protect' cherished human values. However, it has not yet become apparent how they fit into the total scheme of things, which has been labelled the 'ecosystem'. This is particularly true for coastal and marine protected areas, which are a relatively new phenomenon. Gare (1976) observed: 'As with the establishment of parks on land, the beginnings consisted of isolated steps, probably initiated by individual enthusiasts whispering in the right ear, and there was no concerted movement based on a rational program of resource and need assessment . . . There was an initial land-base, so that in no case does it seem that the primary consideration was the marine ecosystem'. Gare identified as among the first formal marine protected areas (not including the many 'traditional' sites): Glacier Bay National Monument in Alaska (1925), Fort Jefferson National Monument in Florida (1935), Green Island in Queensland, Australia (1938), and a few similar protected areas that were established through the early post-World War II era. However, in my view, the first 'self-conscious' marine protected areas came into being only in the later 1950s -their major raison d'e ˆtre having come about due to the rise in snorkelling and the invention of scuba, whereby the full beauty and wonder of the underwater realm could be appreciated for the first time by the general public. At that time, most marine ecosystems seemed intact, but snorkelling and scuba allowed the dangers to marine life to become evident to any who would care to venture there.
Also, new concepts and needs began to appear -namely, the interconnectedness of land and sea, the need to include adjacent lands into marine parks, and the need to control exploitation of resources, especially fisheries. Those realizations led to a new goal, namely: to establish land-and-sea parks under harmonious jurisdictions, and with the additional possibility of becoming fisheries reser6es. Thus, through a series of serendipitous events, was established the 455 km 2 Exuma Cays Land-and-Sea Park, under the Bahamas National Trust Act of 1959 (Ray, 1958(Ray, , 1998)). However, even today the majority of marine protected areas, world-wide, still suffer from multiple jurisdictions and lack of control over adjacent lands. What is worse, most have little or no control over commercial and sport fishing throughout their boundaries, a situation equivalent to allowing big-game hunting in the Serengeti or Yellowstone. This is the case even for the largest of marine protected areas, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and the US National Marine Sanctuaries, which exclude all fishing only in relatively small 'no-take' zones.