316 
Fishery Bulletin 107(3) 
The management implications from this study are 
also two-fold. The observed differences in infauna and 
epifauna indicate that the closed area has been an ef- 
fective measure for protecting habitat and potentially 
aiding stock recovery, although the latter has yet to 
be quantified. This conclusion is important regionally 
because closed area effects on reducing fishing mortal- 
ity in New England have been generally accepted, but 
habitat protection benefits are still controversial. 
A second important implication from this study is 
in the design of closed areas. The results presented 
here indicate that the particular bottom types that 
benefit most from protection depend on the type and 
intensity of fishing gear use before the closure is es- 
tablished. For example, the rocky bottoms in our study 
area were heavily fished with gillnets before the closure 
was implemented, and they showed the most recovery 
for epifauna, but little difference for infauna. As man- 
agement of closed areas is modified in the future, these 
results will help clarify design criteria and refine the 
design of closures. Coupled with the improved ability 
to accurately monitor the position of vessels during 
fishing operations, these data may enable managers to 
more finely tailor spatial characteristics of closed areas 
thereby improving the effectiveness of management 
measures while potentially reducing the restrictions on 
fishing operations. 
Acknowledgments 
This research was funded by the Northeast Consortium 
and the Atlantic Marine Aquaculture Center (AM AC) at 
the University of New Hampshire. It was a collaborative 
effort between the scientific and fishing communities 
of New Hampshire. Fishing vessels were used on all 
research cruises, and included vessels captained by 
P. Kendall, C. Mavrikis, and J. Driscoll. We are very 
appreciative of the efforts of these fishermen in deploying 
sampling gear, solving a multitude of technical problems, 
and freely sharing their knowledge of the study areas. 
We thank J. Adams for participation in nearly all aspects 
of the study, particularly for many days at sea collecting 
core and grab samples. R. McDonnell, R. Cutter, and E. 
Merchant also assisted in field work. We thank K. Ward, 
K. Graiff, R. McDonnell, S. Mikulak, and M. Graffam 
for processing the benthic infauna samples. B. Clifford 
kindly provided the vessel trip report data. The manu- 
script was substantially improved by the comments of 
three anonymous reviewers. This is Contribution 472 in 
the Jackson Estuarine Laboratory Contribution Series. 
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