Comparison of marine priorities determined using different approaches.

We compare rankings on the basis of 1) Return on investment (ROI) analysis for marine conservation for both scenarios; 2) Coral reef species richness; 3) Annual opportunity and management cost (lower cost, higher rank); 4) Average cumulative impact on coral reefs from all human activities [6]. Higher return, richness, and impact values were given a higher rank and equivalent values were assigned the same rank. The spatial location of the ecoregions is indicated by letter in Fig. 2.
*Thirty percent of the available reef or land affecting the reef would be effectively managed with a fixed budget of US $400 M.