Marine protected areas (MPAs) are conservation tools that are increasingly implemented, with growing national commitments for MPA expansion. Perhaps the greatest challenge to expanded use of MPAs is the perceived trade-off between protection and food production. Since MPAs can benefit both conservation and fisheries in areas experiencing overfishing and since overfishing is common in many coastal nations, we ask how MPAs can be designed specifically to improve fisheries yields. We assembled distribution, life history, and fisheries exploitation data for 1,338 commercially important stocks to derive an optimized network of MPAs globally. We show that strategically expanding the existing global MPA network to protect an additional 5% of the ocean could increase future catch by at least 20% via spillover, generating 9 to 12 million metric tons more food annually than in a business-as-usual world with no additional protection. Our results demonstrate how food provisioning can be a central driver of MPA design, offering a pathway to strategically conserve ocean areas while securing seafood for the future.

海洋保护区 (MPA) 是越来越多地实施的保护工具，国家对海洋保护区扩张的承诺也不断增加。也许扩大海洋保护区的使用面临的最大挑战是保护和粮食生产之间的权衡。由于海洋保护区可以使过度捕捞地区的保护和渔业受益，而且过度捕捞在许多沿海国家很常见，因此我们询问如何专门设计海洋保护区来提高渔业产量。我们收集了 1,338 种具有重要商业价值的种群的分布、生活史和渔业开发数据，以得出全球海洋保护区的优化网络。我们表明，战略性地扩大现有的全球海洋保护区网络以保护额外 5% 的海洋，可以通过溢出效应使未来的捕捞量增加至少 20%，每年比正常情况下多生产 9 至 1200 万吨粮食没有额外的保护。我们的研究结果表明，食物供应如何成为海洋保护区设计的核心驱动力，为战略性保护海洋区域提供一条途径，同时确保未来的海鲜安全。