About the Authors

Fiorenza Micheli

micheli@stanford.edu

Affiliation Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, California, United States of America

Benjamin S. Halpern

Affiliation National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America, and the Center for Marine Assessment and Planning, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America

Shaun Walbridge

Affiliation ESRI, Redlands, California, United States of America

Saul Ciriaco

Affiliation Miramare Marine Protected Area, Trieste, Italy

Francesco Ferretti

Affiliation Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, California, United States of America

Simonetta Fraschetti

Affiliation Laboratory of Marine Biology, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy

Rebecca Lewison

Affiliation Coastal and Marine Institute Laboratory, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, United States of America

Leo Nykjaer

Affiliation European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Ispra, Italy

Andrew A. Rosenberg

Affiliation Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

One of the co-authors' (SW) affiliation with a commercial company (ESRI) does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: FM BH. Analyzed the data: SW FM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SW BH FM SC LN RL. Wrote the paper: FM BH SW FF SF RL LN AR.